People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups

Lex Borghans, Bas ter Weel and Bruce Weinberg

No 11985, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Despite indications that people skills are important for understanding individual labor-market outcomes and have become more important over the last decades, there is little analysis by economists. This paper shows that people skills are important determinants of labor-market outcomes, including occupations and wages. We show that technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of people skills in the workplace. We particularly focus on how the increased importance of people skills has affected the labor-market outcomes of under represented groups. We show that the acceleration rate of increase in the importance of people skills between the late 1970s and early 1990s can help explain why women's wages increased more rapidly while the wages of blacks grew more slowly over these years relative to earlier years.

JEL-codes: J16 J21 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab and nep-soc
Note: LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

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Working Paper: People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups (2005)
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