The Wage Premium from Computer and Internet Skills in Poland

The rapid technological change and globalization of labor markets makes computer and internet skills belong to the group of key competences required by employers nowadays. These skills allow to quickly acquire information from various sources located worldwide, process it efficiently and communicate with others. On the basis of the human capital theory we can expect that acquiring these skills should have a positive impact on productivity and hence also on earnings. We aimed to find out whether computer and internet skills have an impact on the earnings of Poles at their main job. We estimated an extended Mincer wage equation using OLS and the Heckman correction for self-selection to employment. We drew on data from three waves of the Human Capital Balance survey (2012-2014), where information on computer and internet skills, both general and specific, was self-reported by respondents. By using this database we managed to control for a wide range of individuals' characteristics, including several different skills, thus reducing the endogeneity bias. Our analysis shows that after controling for several individuals' skills and a variety of other individual characteristics, the wage premium from general computer and internet skills amounts to 12-17% in case of individuals residing in Poland. This can justify incurring public and private expenditures on teaching these skills at schools.