Employment transitions and computer use of older workers

Our empirical analysis studies the impact of computer use on out of employment transitions of older workers, disentangling the effect of using a Personal Computer (PC) at work from that of being PC literate. Data are drawn from the 2000, 2002 and 2004 waves of the Bank of Italy <italic>Survey on Household Income and Wealth</italic>. We provide empirical evidence that, even controlling for a wide set of covariates, older employees who use a PC at work have a higher probability of remaining employed in the future. However, our results also indicate that, once PC literacy is controlled for, the use of a PC at work decreases only marginally the risk of becoming not employed (i.e. the effect is smaller than the one registered when we do not control for PC literacy).