This study examines how aging affects labor productivity using industry-level data of Japan and Korea. The analysis shows that, for both Japan and Korea, aging has positive effects on labor productivity when older workers are working in industries with a large share of information and communication technology (ICT) in the capital stock. We also find that, on average, older workers exert positive effects on labor productivity across all industries when they are low-educated in Japan and high-educated in Korea. In addition, a complementary effect between ICT capital and older workers is observed for both highand low-educated workers in Japan but only for low-educated workers in Korea. We discuss the interplay among educational attainment, industry characteristics, and production techniques to explain the differences between the two countries in the productivity of their older workers.
Using data on Korean workers from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, the present study empirically investigates the incidence and wage effects of educational mismatch. Among full-time workers aged 25-54, approximately 27 percent are overeducated and 15 percent are undereducated. Our results reveal that, after controlling for omitted variable bias and measurement errors, return to an additional year of overeducation is significantly less than that to a year of required education, whereas undereducated workers do not appear to suffer wage penalties associated with their deficit schooling. The findings also show that returns to a year of overeducation vary across fields of study. The returns to overeducation for college graduates from health and welfare, engineering and manufacturing, and social sciences, business and law are relatively high compared with those in agriculture, services, and humanities and arts.
This paper quantitatively examines the effects of aging on labor productivity using individual worker data in Korea. We find that attainment of information and communications technology (ICT) skills and participation in job-related training can help older workers stay productive. The estimation results present that ICT skills attainment has a positive effect on the wages of the older workers aged 50-64 with a high level of education or in a skill-intensive occupation. Job training also has a significant positive effect on the wages of older workers. Even compared to younger workers, older welleducated workers can be more productive through higher ICT skills attainment and jobtraining participation. The evidence suggests that a productivity decrease in line with the aging process can be mitigated by training aging workers to equip themselves with ICT skills.
This paper explores whether training programs were effective in improving labor market performance of individuals, in particular wages and employment probability, in South Korea. The regression analyses using the data from Korean respondents in the Program for the International Assessment of Adults Competencies (PIAAC) survey show the strong positive effects of vocational training programs on earnings as well as on employment probability of individuals, while controlling for education, experience, and literacy skills as a proxy for unobserved ability, as well as occupation and industry. Moreover, the effects of job-training tend to be larger in older cohorts. These results suggest that against challenges posed by rapidly aging population and emergence of technological breakthroughs, Korea should promote vocational training activities and lifelong learning programs, especially to the elderly.
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