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Human Capital Accumulation at Work: Estimates for the World and Implications for Development

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2021-09
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2021-09-30
Author(s)
Jedwab, Remi
Romer, Paul
Samaniego, Roberto
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Abstract
In this paper, the authors: (i) study wage-experience profiles and obtain measures of returns to potential work experience using data from about 24 million individuals in 1,084 household surveys and census samples across 145 countries; (ii) show that returns to work experience are strongly correlated with economic development—workers in developed countries appear to accumulate twice more human capital at work than workers in developing countries; (iii) use a simple accounting framework to find that the contribution of work experience to human capital accumulation and economic development might be as important as the contribution of education itself; and (iv) employ panel regressions to investigate how changes in the returns over time correlate with several factors such as economic recessions, transitions, and human capital stocks.
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Jedwab, Remi; Romer, Paul; Islam, Asif; Samaniego, Roberto. 2021. Human Capital Accumulation at Work: Estimates for the World and Implications for Development. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9786. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36315 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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