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Gender Differences in Wage Returns to Computer Skills in Australia
Anne Hawke.
PAPERS
This article examines how different types of computer skills influence the wages of men and women in Australia. The estimated wage effect for each type of computer use ranged from 2.8% to 7.0%. Comparing these results with earning equations which do not explicitly account for computer usage and skills reveals an associated bias on the returns to education. Wage equations which do not explicitly account for computer skills upwardly bias the returns to education by up to 68%. This bias is inversely proportional to the level of education. That is, the returns to education for individuals with lower educational qualifications are more highly biased by not accounting for computer skills than those with higher qualifications.
