From Ghana to America: The Skill Content of Jobs and Economic Development

Salvatore Lo Bello,Hernan Jorge Winkler,Maria Sanchez Puerta

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3390249

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature exploring the skill content ofjobs. This article contributes to this research by using data on thetask content of occupations from developing countries, instead of US data as most existing studies do. It finds that US-based indexes do not provide a fair approximation of the levels, changes and drivers of the routine cognitive and non-routine manual skill content of jobs in developing countries. The authors also uncover three new stylized facts. First, while developed countries tend to have jobsmore intensive in non-routine cognitive skills than developing ones, income (both in growth and levels) is not associated with the skill content of jobs once other factors are accounted for. Second,while ICT adoption is linked to job de-routinization, international trade is an off setting force. Last, ICT adoption is correlated with lower employment growth in countries with a high share of occupations intensive in routine tasks.

Highlights

There is a growing body of literature that investigates trends in the skill content of jobs in developed and developing countries
The routine manual skill content of jobs has a significant and positive link with GDP growth, a finding consistent with occupations intensive in routine manual tasks being concentrated in more volatile industries over the business cycle (Foote and Ryan, 2015)
An increase in internet penetration is associated with an increase in the non-routine cognitive skills content of jobs and with a decline in the routine manual and cognitive content of jobs

Summary

Introduction

There is a growing body of literature that investigates trends in the skill content of jobs in developed and developing countries. To estimate the task content of jobs, most studies rely on measures tailored for the US economy, where occupations are ranked by the tasks they typically require These occupation-level measures are applied to other countries under the assumption that the task content of occupations is the same as in the United States (see, for example, Apella and Zunino, 2018; Arias et al, 2014). This is a strong assumption, considering that jobs may require different skill sets across countries.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion