IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmpps/v32y2011i4p426-445.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Human capital obsolescence: some evidence for Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Inés P. Murillo

Abstract

Purpose - The main objective of this paper is to analyse the link between human capital depreciation and the educational level of Spanish salaried workers. Design/methodology/approach - Wage equations are estimated by sector and occupation, following the empirical framework proposed by Neuman and Weiss. Data in this study refer to the Spanish labour market, using two cross‐sectional employee‐firm matched data. Findings - The estimates provided in this paper suggest that human capital depreciation rates are not homogeneous for the whole sample; in contrast, they vary across educational levels, being greater as the workers' school attainment increases. Research limitations/implications - The main restriction of the paper is the limited availability of quality longitudinal data to estimate human capital depreciation. Practical implications - Knowledge acquired by workers may quickly become obsolete in a context of technological change. Thus, the paper's main findings support the need for ongoing training programs to update workers' skills to changing market requirements. Originality/value - The added value of this paper is two‐fold. On the one hand, returns to education and human capital depreciation for the Spanish labour force are estimated using a pseudo‐panel created from two cross‐sectional data bases. On the other hand, earnings equations are estimated by sector and occupation in order to calculate human capital depreciation rates; this procedure allows the authors to take into account the worker's occupation and their level of education as well as technological differences associated with their job.

Suggested Citation

  • Inés P. Murillo, 2011. "Human capital obsolescence: some evidence for Spain," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 32(4), pages 426-445, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:32:y:2011:i:4:p:426-445
    DOI: 10.1108/01437721111148540
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437721111148540/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437721111148540/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/01437721111148540?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jacobson, Louis S & LaLonde, Robert J & Sullivan, Daniel G, 1993. "Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 685-709, September.
    2. Paula England, 1982. "The Failure of Human Capital Theory to Explain Occupational Sex Segregation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(3), pages 358-370.
    3. Piva, Mariacristina & Santarelli, Enrico & Vivarelli, Marco, 2005. "The skill bias effect of technological and organisational change: Evidence and policy implications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 141-157, March.
    4. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc74-1, February.
    5. Falk, Martin & Koebel, Bertrand M., 2004. "The impact of office machinery, and computer capital on the demand for heterogeneous labour," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 99-117, February.
    6. P. Aubert & E. Caroli & M. Roger, 2004. "New Technologies, Workplace Organisation and the Age Structure of the Workforce: Firm-Level Evidence," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2004-07, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.
    7. Sherwin Rosen, 1975. "Measuring the Obsolescence of Knowledge," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Income, and Human Behavior, pages 199-232, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Maria Arrazola & Jose de Hevia, 2004. "More on the estimation of the human capital depreciation rate," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 145-148.
    9. Wood Júnior, Thomaz, 1995. "Workers," RAE - Revista de Administração de Empresas, FGV-EAESP Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (Brazil), vol. 35(2), March.
    10. Glenn MacDonald & Michael S. Weisbach, 2004. "The Economics of Has-beens," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 289-310, February.
    11. Leora Friedberg, 2003. "The Impact of Technological Change on Older Workers: Evidence from Data on Computer Use," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(3), pages 511-529, April.
    12. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling and Earnings," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 41-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Borghans,L. & Grip,A.,de, 1999. "Skills and low pay: upgrading or overeducation?," ROA Research Memorandum 005, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    14. Jacob Mincer & Haim Ofek, 1982. "Interrupted Work Careers: Depreciation and Restoration of Human Capital," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(1), pages 3-24.
    15. James W. Albrecht & Per-Anders Edin & Marianne Sundström & Susan B. Vroman, 1999. "Career Interruptions and Subsequent Earnings: A Reexamination Using Swedish Data," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 34(2), pages 294-311.
    16. Neuman, Shoshana & Weiss, Avi, 1995. "On the effects of schooling vintage on experience-earnings profiles: Theory and evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 943-955, May.
    17. Jacob Mincer & Solomon Polachek, 1974. "Family Investments in Human Capital: Earnings of Women," NBER Chapters, in: Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility, pages 76-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Wim Groot, 1998. "Empirical estimates of the rate of depreciation of education," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(8), pages 535-538.
    19. Allen, J.P. & de Grip, A., 2007. "Skill Obsolescence, Lifelong Learning and Labor Market Participation," ROA Research Memorandum 006, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    20. Pfann, Gerard A & Ben Kriechel, 2003. "Heterogeneity among Displaced Workers," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 164, Royal Economic Society.
    21. Bartel, Ann P & Sicherman, Nachum, 1993. "Technological Change and Retirement Decisions of Older Workers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(1), pages 162-183, January.
    22. Stephen Machin & John Van Reenen, 1998. "Technology and Changes in Skill Structure: Evidence from Seven OECD Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1215-1244.
    23. Steven H. Sandell & David Shapiro, 1980. "Work Expectations, Human Capital Accumulation, and the Wages of Young Women," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 15(3), pages 335-353.
    24. Aguirregabiria, Victor & Alonso-Borrego, Cesar, 1997. "Employment Occupational Structure, Technological Capital and Reorganization of Production," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9703, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    25. Geoffrey Carliner, 1982. "The Wages of Older Men," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(1), pages 25-38.
    26. Louis S. Jacobson & Robert J. LaLonde & Daniel G. Sullivan, 1993. "Long-term earnings losses of high-seniority displaced workers," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 17(Nov), pages 2-20.
    27. George Psacharopoulos & Harry Anthony Patrinos, 2004. "Returns to investment in education: a further update," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 111-134.
    28. Lex Borghans & Andries de Grip (ed.), 2000. "The Overeducated Worker?," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1860, March.
    29. Polachek, Solomon William, 1981. "Occupational Self-Selection: A Human Capital Approach to Sex Differences in Occupational Structure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(1), pages 60-69, February.
    30. Moon-Kak Kim & Solomon W. Polachek, 1994. "Panel Estimates of Male-Female Earnings Functions," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 29(2), pages 406-428.
    31. Nickell, Stephen & Bell, Brian, 1995. "The Collapse in Demand for the Unskilled and Unemployment across the OECD," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 40-62, Spring.
    32. Sylvain Weber, 2014. "Human capital depreciation and education level," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(5), pages 613-642, July.
    33. Gregory, Mary & Salverda, Wiemer & Bazen, Stephen (ed.), 2000. "Labour Market Inequalities: Problems and Policies of Low-Wage Employment in International Perspective," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199241699.
    34. Neal, Derek, 1995. "Industry-Specific Human Capital: Evidence from Displaced Workers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(4), pages 653-677, October.
    35. Deaton, Angus, 1985. "Panel data from time series of cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 109-126.
    36. Cörvers, F. & Kriechel, B. & Montizaan, R.M., 2006. "Scenario-analyse van de vervangingsvraag tot 2010," ROA Working Paper 001, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    37. Haskel, Jonathan E. & Slaughter, Matthew J., 2002. "Does the sector bias of skill-biased technical change explain changing skill premia?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1757-1783, December.
    38. Charles D. Bailey, 1989. "Forgetting and the Learning Curve: A Laboratory Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 340-352, March.
    39. María Arrazola & José de Hevia & Marta Risueño & José Félix Sanz Sanz, 2005. "A proposal to estimate human capital depreciation: some evidence for Spain," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 172(1), pages 9-22, June.
    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. van Wetten, Sanne J.L. & Gerards, Ruud & de Grip, Andries, 2020. "Are graduates’ intrapreneurial skills optimally used for innovation?," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 96.
    2. Chernina, Eugenia & Gimpelson, Vladimir, 2022. "Do Wages Grow with Experience? Deciphering the Russian Puzzle," IZA Discussion Papers 15068, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Seamus McGuinness & Konstantinos Pouliakas & Paul Redmond, 2018. "Skills Mismatch: Concepts, Measurement And Policy Approaches," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 985-1015, September.

    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. Cörvers, F. & Kriechel, B. & Montizaan, R.M., 2006. "Scenario-analyse van de vervangingsvraag tot 2010," ROA Working Paper 001, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    2. de Grip, A., 2006. "Evaluating human capital obsolescence," ROA Working Paper 2E, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    3. Ines P. Murillo, 2006. "Returns to Education and Human Capital Depreciation in Spain," ERSA conference papers ersa06p60, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Polachek, Solomon W., 2008. "Earnings Over the Life Cycle: The Mincer Earnings Function and Its Applications," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 4(3), pages 165-272, April.
    5. María Arrazola & José de Hevia & Marta Risueño & José Félix Sanz Sanz, 2005. "A proposal to estimate human capital depreciation: some evidence for Spain," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 172(1), pages 9-22, June.
    6. Görlich, Dennis & De Grip, Andries, 2007. "Human capital depreciation during family-related career interruptions in male and female occupations," Kiel Working Papers 1379, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    7. Castro Silva, Hugo & Lima, Francisco, 2017. "Technology, employment and skills: A look into job duration," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1519-1530.
    8. Astrid Kunze, 2017. "Types of absence from work and wages of young workers with apprenticeship training," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 51(1), pages 1-14, December.
    9. Das, Tirthatanmoy & Polachek, Solomon, 2017. "Micro Foundations of Earnings Differences," IZA Discussion Papers 10922, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Solomon Polachek, 2003. "Mincer's Overtaking Point and the Life Cycle Earnings Distribution," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 273-304, December.
    11. Piva, Mariacristina & Santarelli, Enrico & Vivarelli, Marco, 2005. "The skill bias effect of technological and organisational change: Evidence and policy implications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 141-157, March.
    12. Guido Vignoli, 2012. "Tasa de depreciación de capital humano: Evidencia empírica para Argentina," CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. 498, Universidad del CEMA.
    13. Ortego-Marti, Victor, 2017. "Loss of skill during unemployment and TFP differences across countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 215-235.
    14. Sami Napari, 2008. "The Early‐career Gender Wage Gap among University Graduates in the Finnish Private Sector," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(4), pages 697-733, December.
    15. Alan Manning & Joanna Swaffield, 2008. "The gender gap in early-career wage growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 983-1024, July.
    16. Molina, José Alberto & Montuenga, Víctor M., 2008. "The Motherhood Wage Penalty in a Mediterranean Country: The Case of Spain," IZA Discussion Papers 3574, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Marconi, Gabriele, 2015. "Dynamic returns to schooling by work experience," MPRA Paper 88073, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Amélie Speiser, 2021. "Back to work: the effect of a long-term career interruption on subsequent wages in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 157(1), pages 1-14, December.
    19. Parker, Simon C., 2013. "Do serial entrepreneurs run successively better-performing businesses?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 652-666.
    20. Beblo, Miriam & Wolf, Elke, 2003. "Sind es die Erwerbsunterbrechungen? : ein Erklärungsbeitrag zum Lohnunterschied zwischen Frauen und Männern in Deutschland (Is it the employment interruptions? * a contribution to explaining the wage ," Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 36(4), pages 560-572.

    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:eme:ijmpps:v:32:y:2011:i:4:p:426-445. 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.