Earning Profiles for Italian Male Workers: Is There Evidence of a Premium for Education?

In this study we concentrate on the study of inter-generational and intra-generational patterns of earnings for Italian male dependent workers for the period 1987-2010. Using data from the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth, we construct cohort-education-(macro) region specific age profiles for mean real wages (the measure of central location here adopted) and for the 90-10 percentile differential (the inequality measure), allowing for region specific price indexes. Our main interest is to verify whether returns to education have increased in Italy in the last quarter of century.