This article studies changes in computer use and work discretion and intensity in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion of workers using computers has increased from 40 per cent to more than 60 per cent, there remain significant differences between countries even within the same occupations. Several countries have seen a significant increase in computer use even in low-skilled occupations generally assumed to be less affected by technology. Overall, the great increase in computer use between 1995 and 2015 coincided with a period of modest deterioration of job quality in the EU-15 as a whole, as work discretion declined for most occupational and educational groups, while work intensity increased slightly for most of them. Our OLS results exploiting variation within country-occupation cells point to a sizeable positive effect of computer use on work discretion, but to no effect on work intensity. Our instrumental variable estimates point to an even more benign effect of computer use on job quality as measured by work discretion and work intensity. Hence, the results suggest that the (moderate) deterioration in the quality of work observed in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015 has occurred despite the spread of computers, rather than because of them.
We examine several methodological considerations when eliciting probabilistic expectations in a developing country context using the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI). We conclude that although, on average, individuals are able to understand the concept of probability, responses are sensitive to framing effects and to own versus hypothetical-person effects. We find that overall, people are pessimistic about their survival probabilities compared with state-specific life tables and that socioeconomic status does influence beliefs about own survival expectations as found in previous literature in other countries. Higher levels of education and income have a positive association with survival expectations, and these associations persist even when conditioning on self-reported health. The results remain robust to several alternative specifications. We then compare the survival measures with objective measures of health. We find that activities of daily life, height, and low hemoglobin levels covary with subjective expectations in expected directions.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13524-017-0560-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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