IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/03-35.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Qualifications, Employment and the Value of Human Capital, 1986-2001

Author

Abstract

This paper summarises the changing nature of qualifications across the working age population in New Zealand over the period from 1986 to 2001, and investigates the relationships between the changing qualification distribution and employment and income. First, the results confirm that there was a general upskilling of the population, as measured by formal educational qualifications. Second, we examine patterns of qualification change and employment growth measured in job groups, and find that the upskilling of the population occurred across a wide range of job-groups. Also, although the results show the employment growth was strongest in job-groups with high initial levels of skilled workers, employment growth is only weakly related to upskilling. Third, we decompose the change in the value of human capital into contributions due to changes in the qualification mix, changes in the (economic) returns to qualifications, and the interaction between these two factors. The value of human capital increased by 20% over the period: about 75% of this increase can be attributed to increasing incomes holding constant the mix of qualifications, 15-20% to an increasing skill mix, and the residual to interaction effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Dean Hyslop & Dave Mare & Jason Timmins, 2003. "Qualifications, Employment and the Value of Human Capital, 1986-2001," Treasury Working Paper Series 03/35, New Zealand Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:03/35
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2007-09/twp03-35.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2000. "Wage Inequality: International Comparisons of Its Sources," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 52934, September.
    2. Katz, Lawrence F. & Autor, David H., 1999. "Changes in the wage structure and earnings inequality," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1463-1555, Elsevier.
    3. Trinh Le & John Gibson & Les Oxley, 2006. "A Forward‐Looking Measure Of The Stock Of Human Capital In New Zealand," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(5), pages 593-609, September.
    4. Paul A David (with the assistance of John Gabriel Goddard Lopez), 2000. "Knowledge, Capabilities and Human Capital Formation in Economic Growth," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/13, New Zealand Treasury, revised 10 Apr 2001.
    5. David Card & John E. DiNardo, 2002. "Skill-Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 733-783, October.
    6. Sholeh A Maani, 2000. "Secondary and Tertiary Education Attainment and Income Levels for Maori and Non-Maori Over Time," Treasury Working Paper Series 00/18, New Zealand Treasury.
    7. Daron Acemoglu, 2001. "Human Capital Policies and the Distribution of Income: A Framework for Analysis and Literature Review," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/03, New Zealand Treasury.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Niven Winchester, 2008. "Searching for the Smoking Gun: Did Trade Hurt Unskilled Workers?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(265), pages 141-156, June.
    2. Dean Hyslop & Dave Maré, 2009. "Skill Upgrading in New Zealand, 1986–2001," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 42(4), pages 422-434, December.
    3. Geoff Mason & Matthew Osborne, 2007. "Productivity, Capital-Intensity and Labour Quality at Sector Level in New Zealand and the UK," Treasury Working Paper Series 07/01, New Zealand Treasury.
    4. Sid Durbin, 2004. "Review of Workplace Skills, Technology Adoption and Firm Productivity: A Review," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/16, New Zealand Treasury.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matteo Iacoviello, 2008. "Household Debt and Income Inequality, 1963–2003," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(5), pages 929-965, August.
    2. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2010. "A Quantitative Analysis of the Evolution of the US Wage Distribution, 1970–2000," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 227-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Gueorgui Kambourov & Iourii Manovskii, 2000. "Occupational Mobility and Wage Inequality, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 04-026, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 15 Jun 2004.
    4. James Spletzer & Elizabeth Weber Handwerker, 2015. "The Role of Establishments and the Concentration of Occupations in Wage Inequality," Working Papers id:7427, eSocialSciences.
    5. Linnea Polgreen & Pedro Silos, 2008. "Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Sensitivity Analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(2), pages 302-313, April.
    6. Dirk Antonczyk & Thomas DeLeire & Bernd Fitzenberger, 2018. "Polarization and Rising Wage Inequality: Comparing the U.S. and Germany," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-33, April.
    7. Xuejun Liu & Albert Park & Yaohui Zhao, 2010. "Explaining Rising Returns to Education in Urban China in the 1990s," Trade Working Papers 22720, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    8. Fitzenberger, Bernd & Kohn, Karsten, 2006. "Skill Wage Premia, Employment, and Cohort Effects: Are Workers in Germany All of the Same Type?," IZA Discussion Papers 2185, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Firpo, Sergio & Messina, Julián, 2017. "Ageing Poorly? Accounting for the Decline in Earnings Inequality in Brazil, 1995-2012," IZA Discussion Papers 10656, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    10. Bosch, Mariano & Manacorda, Marco, 2008. "Minimum wages and earnings inequality in urban Mexico. Revisiting the evidence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19561, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Yosr Abid & Cathal O'Donoghue & Denisa Sologon, 2016. "Decomposing Welfare Inequality in Egypt and Tunisia: an Oaxaca-Blinder Based Approach," Working Papers 1015, Economic Research Forum, revised Jun 2016.
    12. Kathrin Göggel, 2007. "Sinkende Bildungsrenditen durch Bildungsreformen?: Evidenz aus Mikrozensus und SOEP," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 11, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    13. Spitz, Alexandra & Bertschek, Irene, 2003. "IT, Organizational Change and Wages," ZEW Discussion Papers 03-69, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    14. Nico Voigtlaender, 2009. "Many Sectors Meet More Skills: Intersectoral Linkages and the Skill Bias of Technology," 2009 Meeting Papers 1136, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Saul D. Hoffman & Ivo Bicanic & Oriana Vukoja, 2010. "Wage Differentials and Wage Inequality in Croatia, 1970-2008: Assessing the Labor Market Impact of Economic Transformation," Working Papers 10-13, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    16. Domeij, David & Ljungqvist, Lars, 2006. "Wage Structure and Public Sector Employment: Sweden versus the United States 1970-2002," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 638, Stockholm School of Economics.
    17. Snower, Dennis J. & Goerlich, Dennis, 2013. "Multitasking and Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 7426, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2007. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 118-133, February.
    19. Hornstein, Andreas & Krusell, Per & Violante, Giovanni L., 2005. "The Effects of Technical Change on Labor Market Inequalities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 1275-1370, Elsevier.
    20. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Cross-Country Inequality Trends," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 121-149, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Qualifications; Upskilling; Human Capital; Employment Growth; Incomes; New Zealand;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:03/35. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSS Web and Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.