In the first chapter, titled “Lifetime Hours Inequality and Occupational Choice" I explore the role ofhours worked in contributing to lifetime earnings inequality. The variation in hours worked, particularly early in the life cycle, can contribute to earnings dispersion later in life. I argue that this variation arises from individuals with heterogenous learning ability and leisure preferences selecting into occupations that reward hours worked with future wage growth at different rates. Using empirical evidence, I demonstrate strong correlations between occupational wage growth, cognitive test scores, and hours worked. Informed by this evidence, I develop and calibrate a model of endogenous labor supply and occupational choice to disentangle the role of leisure preferences and learning ability in explaining hours worked and earnings dispersion. I find that cognitive ability accounts for 15% of the variance in log hours at age 23 and 54% of the variance in log earnings at age 55, while leisure preferences explain 85% of the variance in log hours at age 23, and 42% of the variance in earnings at age 55. Finally, I look into the normative implications of these findings, showing that when incorporating learning ability as a driver of hours dispersion, increases in tax progressivity are more effective at reducing inequality and less costly in terms of lifetime welfare. In the second chapter, titled “Informality and Life Cycle Wage Growth in Developing Countries", co-authored with Daniel Jaar, we explore the role played by informality in curbing life cycle wage growth in developing economies. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the Chilean and Peruvian household surveys we compute life cycle wage growth profiles for formal and informal workers. We find that in both Peru and Chile, there are significant differences in average wage growth by sector, of around 30 percentage points over the life cycle. Results hold within education groups and across industries. We are currently exploring how firm size and worker sorting across sectors can generate these patterns through differential human capital accumulation.