Book Chapter
Tunisia: employment and inequality trends

In this chapter, we investigate the earnings inequality trends and their determinants in the decades before and after the Tunisian Revolution. A recentred influence function (RIF) decomposition is performed to decompose the change in earnings into wage structure and composition effects and to assess the contribution of various determinants of inequality change.

We find that earnings inequality decreased significantly during the period of investigation in Tunisia. The occupational earnings followed an L-shaped evolution. The main contributors to the declining inequality are the decrease in the public–private wage gap and in sector wage gaps on the demand side, and the decreasing education premia on the supply side. There is little evidence of the impact of computerization on wage inequality in Tunisia’s labour market.