Career Interruptions and Subsequent Earnings: A Reexamination Using Swedish Data

This paper reexamines the link between career interruptions and subsequent wages. Using a rich new Swedish data set, we are able to disaggregate time out of work into several components. In both cross-sectional and panel estimations, regressing log wages on total time out results in a negative coeff...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of human resources 1999-04, Vol.34 (2), p.294-311
Main Authors: Albrecht, James W., Edin, Per-Anders, Sundström, Marianne, Vroman, Susan B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capital depreciation
Career changes
Career development
Career development planning
Careers
Depreciation
Earnings
Family leave
Foreign Countries
Households
Human Capital
Human resources
Hypotheses
Income distribution
Leaves of Absence
Longitudinal Studies
Men
Outcomes of Education
Parental Leave
Public sector
Salary Wage Differentials
Sex Differences
Stopouts
Studies
Sweden
Unemployment
Variable coefficients
Variables
Wage behaviour
Wage rates
Wages
Wages & salaries
Women
Working women
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Summary:This paper reexamines the link between career interruptions and subsequent wages. Using a rich new Swedish data set, we are able to disaggregate time out of work into several components. In both cross-sectional and panel estimations, regressing log wages on total time out results in a negative coefficient on total time out, which has been interpreted in other studies as evidence for human capital depreciation. However, we find that different types of time out have different effects on wages and that these effects vary by gender. This suggests that human capital depreciation is not the entire explanation for the negative effect of career interruptions on subsequent wages.
ISSN:0022-166X
1548-8004
DOI:10.2307/146347