Digital Economy, Noncognitive Skill Premium and Gender Wage Gap

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Journal of Central University of Finance & Economics ›› 2025, Vol. 0 ›› Issue (2) : 38-56.

WANG Jie, ZHANG Shiwei, ZHANG Junkai

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Abstract

The development of digital economy has reshaped the demand structure of labor skills and challenged the traditional human capital theory.Based on the job task model and the assumption that cognitive skills and noncognitive skills are inseparable, we construct a general equilibrium model, and use the CFPS data of 2018 to explore the impact of digital economy on the return to different types of skills and how it affects the gender wage gap in the Chinese labor market.We find that the development of digital economy leads to the increase of employment in non-routine work tasks and the increase of wage return on noncognitive skills, so that workers with higher noncognitive skills can get higher wage return, which is mainly realized by promoting the increase of career choice probability of non-routine work tasks and the increase of social capital investment.We also find that the development of digital economy helps to narrow the gender wage gap, but due to the gender difference in the return to noncognitive skill, the gender wage gap in routine work tasks is constantly widening.Therefore, while promoting the development of the digital economy, government departments should focus on the development and cultivation of workers' noncognitive skills in order to adapt to the reshaping of the structure of labor skills demanded by the development of the digital economy and to promote wage growth.

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Digital economy / Noncognitive skill / Gender Wage Gap / General equilibrium model

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WANG Jie, ZHANG Shiwei, ZHANG Junkai. Digital Economy, Noncognitive Skill Premium and Gender Wage Gap[J]. Journal of Central University of Finance & Economics, 2025, 0(2): 38-56

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