Skills for Work in Bulgaria : The Relationship between Cognitive and Socioemotional Skills and Labor Market Outcomes
Bulgaria is undergoing both a rapid demographic transition and a significant structural shift in its economy. Increasing longevity combined with low fertility and emigration have made Bulgaria’s age structure increasingly top-heavy and its dependen...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/01/25804233/skills-work-bulgaria-relationship-between-cognitive-socioemotional-skills-labor-market-outcomes http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23795 |
| Summary: | Bulgaria is undergoing both a rapid
demographic transition and a significant structural shift in
its economy. Increasing longevity combined with low
fertility and emigration have made Bulgaria’s age structure
increasingly top-heavy and its dependency ratios higher. At
the same time, the economic sectors that absorbed
low-skilled workers during the high-growth early 2000s, such
as construction and manufacturing, were those that
contracted most during the 2008–09 economic crisis and they
have not yet recovered. Meanwhile, activities demanding
high-skilled labor, such as financial and business services
and information, communication, and technology (ICT), have
been faring relatively well. This study uses a new dataset
with direct measures of cognitive and socio-emotional skills
to examine the relationship between skills and labor market
outcomes in Bulgaria. For a long time, labor market studies
had to rely on formal educational attainment as a measure of
an individual’s skills. However, the correlation between
formal education and skills is not perfect, and not all
diplomas are equal in terms of imparting certain skills to
students. Moreover, valuable skills can be acquired without
formal diplomas, for example through on-the-job training or
learning-by doing. In addition to using educational
attainment this study therefore looks at direct measures of
two types of skills that employer’s value: cognitive skills,
such as functional literacy and numeracy, and
socio-emotional skills, such as self-discipline,
perseverance, and ability to work well with others. The
objective is to assess the extent to which these direct
measures shed light on what matters for labor market
success, defined as being in the labor force, being
employed, and earning more. This analysis relies on original
data (the Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey,
BLISS) collected by the World Bank and Open Society
Institute–Sofia in the spring of 2013, which for the first
time in the country included nationally-representative
information on the cognitive and socio-emotional skills of
the working-age population. |
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