NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Technological Change and the Careers of Older Workers

Ann P. Bartel, Nachum Sicherman

NBER Working Paper No. 3433 (Also Reprint No. r1802)*
Issued in July 1993
NBER Program(s):   LS

Recent research has shown that technological change has important labor

market implications and in this paper we demostrate one on the avenues

through which this occurs. According to the theory of human capital,

technological charqe will influence the retirement decisions of older workers

in two ways. First, workers in industries that are characterized by high

rates of technological chanqe will have later retirement ages because these

industries require larger amounts of on-the-job training. Second, an

unexpected channge in the industry's rate of technological change will induce

older workers to retire sooner because the required amount of retraining will

be an unattractive investment. We matched time-series data on rates of

technological change and required amounta of training in 35 industrial

sectors with data from the NLS Older Men Survey to test these hypotheses.

Our results strongly support both hypotheses.

*Published: Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 11, No. 1, Part 1, pp. 162-183 (1993).

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