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Increased Wage Inequality via ICTs: Making a Case for Human Capital Investment

Published: 03 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Globalisation and technological advances have affected workers' livelihoods. This study analysed how capital investment in ICTs at the workplace affected marginalised low wage workers in a large sample of firms (n=632) in Singapore. We found that social investment by the state for ICTs investments in workplaces led to a significant negative, albeit marginal, reduction in wage growth. We argue that these findings are supported by economic theory, and propose that government investment balance towards higher-order digital skills. We advocate for further research to measure the impact of worker ownership in enterprises on productivity growth, and hence equality objectives.

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  1. Increased Wage Inequality via ICTs: Making a Case for Human Capital Investment

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    ICTD '16: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
    June 2016
    427 pages
    ISBN:9781450343060
    DOI:10.1145/2909609
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 03 June 2016

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    1. Employment issues
    2. Funding
    3. Governmental regulations

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