In this paper, we look at the long-term evolution of the composition of union membership in the four largest European countries: France, West Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Using unexploited micro-data coming from post-electoral, labor, and household surveys, we first revisit commonly accepted unionization levels from the past 60 years. We nd that, for France and Italy, union density was at times under- and over- estimated respectively. Second, we present long-run evidence on the evolution of the composition of unions in terms of the socio-economic characteristics (occupation, length of education, public or private sector, gender) of their members. Two types of unionisation emerge from this analysis. In France and Italy, the composition of unions has been primarily determined by structural changes in the composition of the workforce with no notable changes in the selection of the different groups into unions when aggregate density varied. In the UK and West Germany, instead, selection into unions has changed dramatically: Blue collars and less educated workers were over-represented in the '60s, but this has declined over time. We argue that these two types of unionization are related to the institutional characteristics of each country and show that the evolution of selection into union is linked to the public-sectorization of unions: as union density fall, the share of public workers in unions increases.

The color-blind approach to data collection has long been debated. The lack of ethno-racial information in surveys and administrative data impedes researchers from studying the level of inequality and discrimination against minorities. As an alternative to ethno-racial information, the use of factual information such as parents’ place of birth has been proposed. In this paper, we discuss the color-blind approach in France and review the evidence of discrimination based on origins. Using the Trajectories and Origins survey, we propose a novel index capturing the degree of individuals’ alterity, and we present evidence that it is associated with a penalty in the labor market. Exploiting this index, we further investigate whether information on parents’ place of birth is valuable and adequate to measure population diversity.

We study racial inequality in 21st century France. Using parents’ nationality at birth, we overcome the lack of ethno-racial statistics stemming from the country’s “color-blind” approach. We document substantial earnings penalties for racial minorities along the income distribution. Penalties are larger at the median than the top and for Middle-Eastern and North African (MENA) and Sub-Saharan African origin (Black) individuals. We compare racial inequality in France vs. the U.S. by simulating where French minorities would fall in the U.S. distribution. Black and Non-White individuals in France benefit from the country’s lower overall inequality, but experience comparable, occasionally larger, rank gaps.

Gender inequality has declined in recent decades but remains substantial, especially in leadership positions. This paper examines how corporate gender culture is associated with gender gaps across organizations within the same sector. Using longitudinal data on U.S. labor unions’ employment and compensation from 1962–2022, we study how gender inequality evolved across four unionization waves. We find persistent under-representation of women in union leadership and sizable wage gaps despite large increases in female membership. Differences across founding waves reveal substantial heterogeneity in gender outcomes, consistent with the long-lasting influence of organizational histories, social attitudes, and gender norms.

Although unions advocate higher wages and greater equality, little is known about their own compensation practices. Using newly assembled administrative data covering more than one million observations on U.S. union workers, we show that unions practice what they preach. They pay wages that are, on average, almost 20 percent higher than those in private firms, yet are substantially more equally distributed. We show that this pattern cannot be explained by differences in skill dispersion or firm size. Instead, we trace it to institutions and norms that limit top pay, including internal member control and media-driven reputational sanctions. Our findings underscore how pay norms can shape wages in stakeholder organizations and identify the institutional channels through which such norms become effective.

Integrating refugees is a main challenge for Western societies. Besides governments, civil society engagement may play an important but understudied role in refugee integration. In this study, we investigate how the density of nonprofit organizations in the local community hosting newly arrived refugees can influence refugee integration pathways. We focus on two main integration channels - obtaining employment or enrolling in an educational program. We use Danish register data and leverage the spatial dispersal policy implemented in Denmark between 1999 and 2016 to investigate these issues. Refugees assigned to municipalities with a higher presence of non-profit organizations are less likely to obtain employment and have lower income levels over time. We find no significant association between non-profit organizations and refugees’ enrollment in education. Overall, our findings provide limited support for non-profits being a steppingstone for refugees’ socioeconomic integration. We provide indirect evidence that this is due to the lack of contact between natives and refugees in these organizations. Our results suggest that public policies that promote direct links between refugees and natives may be more effective in supporting integration than non-profit initiatives alone.

Cet article restitue, à partir de multiples sources de données quantitatives, l’évolution de l’influence des syndicats en France depuis les années 1950. Nous relativisons d’une part les explications de la désyndicalisation des années 1980 par des transformations socioéconomiques ou par un renouvellement générationnel. Nous nuançons d’autre part l’idée d’un déclin linéaire, en faisant apparaître d'autres ressorts de la capacité de mobilisation des syndicats, liés au contexte économique, social et politique.