¿Es la jubilación un buen momento para aprender informática?

Laburpena

The aim of this paper is to disentangle the characteristics of older people who know computer science and test if older people consider retirement as a good moment for learning this issue. We use data from the Survey of Living Conditions of Older People (2010) carried out by the imserso to individuals aged 65 and older. Available information al- low us to differentiate among three categories of users: (1) those who knew computer science before getting retired, pre-users (6.79%), (2) those who learnt it after retirement, post-users (2.76%) and (3) those who have never expressed interest in it, never-users (90.45%). As compared to never-users, people qualified as pre-users or post-users are to a large extent male, aged 65-69, with high school or college education, income higher than 900 euros/month and, they usually combine this activity with others such as tourism, sports and volunteerism. To determine which variables affect the probability of becoming post-user we estimate a bivariate probit model with sample selection. The probability of becoming post-user increases by 151% for those who consider that retirement is "an opportunity for pursuing your particular hobbies" and it increases by 71% for those who report that their main fear for the future is to loose memory. However, living in a municipality with less than 5,000 inhabitants or being a housekeeper during working life decreases this probability. On the other hand, the well suited moment for becoming familiar with computer science is just after retirement because the probability of becoming post-user increases by 245% for the cohort aged 65-59 years.