The Decline of Routine Tasks, Education Investments, and Intergenerational Mobility

Patrick Bennett, Kai Liu and Kjell Salvanes
Additional contact information
Kai Liu: University of Cambridge
Kjell Salvanes: Norwegian School of Economics

No 23-382, Upjohn Working Papers from W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Abstract: How does a large structural change to the labor market affect education investments made at young ages? Exploiting differential exposure to the national decline in routine-task intensity across local labor markets, we show that the secular decline in routine tasks causes major shifts in education investments of high school students, where they invest less in vocational-trades education and increasingly invest in college education. Our results highlight that labor demand changes impact inequality in the next generation. Low-ability and low-SES students are most responsive to task-biased demand changes and, as a result, intergenerational mobility in college education increases.

Keywords: Local labor markets; routine tasks; task-biased demand change; human capital; college; intergenerational mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J23 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar ... ext=up_workingpapers (application/pdf)
This material is copyrighted. Permission is required to reproduce any or all parts.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Decline of Routine Tasks, Education Investments, and Intergenerational Mobility (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upj:weupjo:23-382

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Upjohn Working Papers from W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research 300 S. Westnedge Ave. Kalamazoo, MI 49007 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().