Computers as stepping stones? Technological change and equality of labor market opportunities

Melanie Arntz, Cäcilia Lipowski, Guido Neidhöfer and Ulrich Zierahn-Weilage

No 22-014, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper analyzes whether technological change improves equality of labor market opportunities by decreasing returns to parental background. We find that in Germany during the 1990s, computerization improved the access to technologyadopting occupations for workers with low-educated parents, and reduced their wage penalty within these occupations. We also show that this significantly contributed to a decline in the overall wage penalty experienced by workers from disadvantaged parental backgrounds over this time period. Competing mechanisms, such as skill-specific labor supply shocks and skill- upgrading, do not explain these findings.

Keywords: skill-biased technical change; wage inequality; equality of opportunity; intergenerational persistence; parental background; class ceiling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J23 J24 J31 J62 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Computers as Stepping Stones? Technological Change and Equality of Labor Market Opportunities (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:22014

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