BRIAN D. BELL Institute of Economics & Statistics, University of Oxford, OX1 3TG and Nuffield College, Oxford, OX1 1NF, UK SKILL-BIASED TECHNICAL CHANGE AND WAGES: EVIDENCE FROM A LONGITUDINAL DATA SET The widening of the wage structure in the 1980s has been attributed in large part to the impact of skill-biased technical change. Yet very few studies have shown a clear link between an individuals wage and their use of skill-biased technology. One important exception is Krueger (1993) who demonstrates a strong positive correlation between computer usage and wages. This paper explores this correlation in more detail and examines the impact on wages of other indicators of skill-biased technology. Using a longitudinal data set for the UK we show that computer use and other measures of skill are strongly correlated with earnings, appear to have a productivity enhancing interpretation and are not merely capturing unobserved characteristics. Furthermore the increased importance of these skills can explain a large fraction of the increase in the returns to education over the course of the 1980s.