This study explores how technological, organizational, and managerial changes affected the labor-market status of older male manufacturing workers in early twentieth century America. Industrial characteristics that were favorably related to the labor-market status of older industrial workers include: higher labor productivity, less capital- and material-intensive production, a shorter workday, lower intensity of work, greater job flexibility, and more formalized employment relationship. Technical innovations that improved productivity often negatively affected the quality of the work environment of older workers. These results suggest that the technological transformations in the Industrial Era brought mixed consequences to the labor-market status of older workers. On one hand, technical and organizational modifications improved the elderly workers’ employment prospect by raising labor productivity, diminishing hours of work, and formalizing employment relations. On the other hand, some types of technical innovations, which are characterized by additional requirements for physical strength, mental agility, and ability to acquire new skills, forced older workers out of their jobs. Since the pace and nature of technical change considerably differed across industries, and possibly across firms within the same industry, the labor-market experiences of individual older workers should have been highly heterogeneous.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
14746.
Length: Date of creation: Feb 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14746
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
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Krueger, Alan B. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2002.
"Labor supply effects of social insurance,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 33, pages 2327-2392
Elsevier.
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