TY  - JOUR
AU  - Borghans,Lex
AU  - Weel,Bas ter
AU  - Weinberg,Bruce A.
TI  - People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11985
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11985
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11985.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lex Borghans
Department of Economics and ROA
Maastricht University
P.O. Box 616
NL-6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 43 3883620
E-Mail: lex.borghans@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Bas ter Weel
Department of International Economics
CPB Netherlands Bureau
for Economic Policy Analysis
P.O.Box 80510
2508 GM Den Haag
The Netherlands
E-Mail: b.ter.weel@cpb.nl

Bruce A. Weinberg
Department of Economics
Ohio State University
410 Arps Hall
1945 North High Street
Columbus, OH  43210
Tel: 614/292-5642
Fax: 614/292-3906
E-Mail: weinberg.27@osu.edu
AB  - 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%u2019s wages increased more rapidly while the wages of blacks grew more slowly over these years relative to earlier years.
ER  -