Abstract

This paper examines how artificial intelligence has already and will continue to affect occupational income inequality throughout the labor market by focusing on whether occupations with greater AI exposure experienced larger changes in within-occupation wage dispersion as well as inferring how AI’s continuous evolution affects the theoretical worker. I conduct a detailed review of the existing literature to contextualize the relationship between artificial intelligence and labor market outcomes. The theory in this paper discusses productivity inequality brought about by artificial intelligence while the empirical section uses wage in- equality as an imperfect proxy. Using occupational wage data and an AI-exposure metric developed by Felten, Raj, and Seamans, I estimate the relationship between AI exposure and changes in income inequality across occupations over a fixed 5-year period. The results provide significant evidence of a link between AI occupational exposure and changes to inequality and drastic differences between employment-weighted and unweighted models.

Advisor

Davison, Colin

Department

Economics

Disciplines

Economics | Economic Theory | Income Distribution | Labor Economics

Keywords

inequality, AI, artificial intelligence

Publication Date

2026

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

Download

Share

COinS
 

© Copyright 2026 Jacob O. Fried