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Does the rise of robotic technology make people healthier?
Author(s) -
Gunadi Christian,
Ryu Hanbyul
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.4361
Subject(s) - robot , market penetration , demographic economics , population , business , labour economics , economics , environmental health , medicine , computer science , marketing , artificial intelligence
Technological advancements bring changes to our life, altering our behaviors as well as our role in the economy. In this paper, we examine the potential effect of the rise of robotic technology on health. Using the variation in the initial distribution of industrial employment in US cities and the difference in robot adoption across industries over time to predict robot exposure at the local labor market, we find evidence that higher penetration of industrial robots in the local economy is positively related to the health of the low‐skilled population. A 10% increase in robots per 1000 workers is associated with an approximately 10% reduction in the share of low‐skilled individuals reporting poor health. Further analysis suggests that the reallocation of tasks partly explains this finding. A 10% increase in robots per 1000 workers is associated with an approximately 1.5% reduction in physical tasks supplied by low‐skilled workers.