Human capital depreciation and job tasks

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the link between human capital depreciation and job tasks, with an emphasis on potential differences between education levels. We estimate an extended Mincer equation based on Neumann and Weiss’s (1995) model using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The results show that human capital gained from higher education levels depreciates at a faster rate than other human capital. Moreover, the productivity-enhancing value of education diminishes faster in jobs with a high share of non-routine analytical, non-routine manual, and routine cognitive tasks. These jobs are characterized by more frequent changes in core-skill or technology-skill requirements. The key implication of this research is that education should focus on equipping workers with more general skills in all education levels. With ongoing technological advances, work environments, and with it, skill demands will change, increasing the importance to provide educational and lifelong learning policies to counteract the depreciation of skills. The study contributes by incorporating a task perspective based on the classification used in works on job polarization. This allows a comparison with studies on job obsolescence due to labor-replacing technologies and enables combined education and labor market policies to address the challenges imposed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.