Job polarization in aging economies

Abstract

This paper extends on French data a previous finding on US data: employment growth has been more important in the lower and upper tail of the job quality distribution. The originality of the paper is to argue that the diffusion of ICT cannot explain alone the polarization at the lower tail of the distribution. However, when combined with population aging, our framework predicts a progressive concentration of employment in the service sector (bottom tail of the job quality distribution). This results from a purely demand shift, since, as revealed by our estimations goods and services are complementary for seniors. The decrease in the relative price of goods induced by ICT diffusion is thus associated with an increased demand for services if the proportion of seniors is increasing.

The Effect of Computer Use on Work Discretion and Work Intensity: Evidence from Europe

“…Plausible sources of international industry‐level changes over our sample period are the growth in international trade (Autor et al . 2013) and changes in output demand due to demographic changes or wealth effects (Mazzolari and Ragusa 2013; Moreno‐Galbis and Sopraseuth 2014).…”

The Effect of Computer Use on Job Quality: Evidence from Europe

“…Nevertheless, correlation in shocks to similar occupations could arise from global shocks to industries in which such occupations are concentrated across countries. Plausible sources of international industry-level changes over our sample period are the growth in international trade (D. H. Autor, Dorn, and Hanson 2013) and changes in output demand due to demographic changes or wealth effects (Mazzolari and Ragusa 2013;Moreno-Galbis and Sopraseuth 2014).…”

Changing income inequality: A distributional paradigm for Canada

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