Make Yourselves Scarce: The Effect of Demographic Change on the Relative Wages and Employment Rates of Experienced Workers

Michael Johannes Böhm () and Christian Siegel
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Michael Johannes Böhm: TU Dortmund

No 12243, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We argue that rising supply of experience not only reduces experienced workers' relative wages but also their relative labor market participation. From a theoretical model we derive predictions which we quasi-experimentally investigate, using variation across U.S. local labor markets (LLMs) over the last decades and instrumenting experience supply by the LLMs' age structures a decade earlier. We find that aging substantially reduces experienced workers' relative wages and employment rates, and also their labor market participation rates. Our results imply that the effect of demographic change on labor markets might be more severe than previously recognized, as it reaches beyond wages.

Keywords: employment of experienced workers; return to experience; demographic change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J21 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: International Economic Review, 2021, 62 (4), 1537 - 1568

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Related works:
Journal Article: MAKE YOURSELVES SCARCE: THE EFFECT OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE ON THE RELATIVE WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT RATES OF EXPERIENCED WORKERS (2021)
Working Paper: Make Yourselves Scarce: The Effect of Demographic Change on the Relative Wages and Employment Rates of Experienced Workers (2021)
Working Paper: Make Yourselves Scarce: The Effect of Demographic Change on the Relative Wages and Employment Rates of Experienced Workers (2019)
Working Paper: Make yourselves scarce: The effect of demographic change on the relative wages and employment rates of experienced workers (2019)
Working Paper: Make yourselves scarce: The effect of demographic change on the relative wages and employment rates of experienced workers (2019)
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