Labour market

No stratified effect of unemployment on incomes. How the market, state and household compensate for income loss in the UK and Switzerland

This paper looks at the loss of income in the two years after unemployment in the UK and in Switzerland and finds that while lower income groups are more vulnerable to becoming unemployed they are not necessarily more vulnerable to its consequences. The researchers used data on more than 35,000 people who took part in … Read more

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Earnings in Later-Life Self-Employment

It has been suggested that individuals with ADHD are likely to go into self-employment, where a flair for entrepreneurship may improve their prospects. But this study suggests the choice of self-employment may not always be a positive one for those with this condition. This paper asks two questions: Are those with a genetic predisposition to … Read more

ADHD and later-life labor market outcomes in the United States

Authors: Cornelius Rietveld, Pankaj Patel,
Issue: 2019
Themes: ,

People at genetic risk of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) suffer negative effects on their employment, individual income and household wealth. But these can probably be mitigated by higher educational attainment, this paper finds. The researchers looked at a sample of approximately 9,000 individuals aged 50-65 who took part in the American Health and Retirement … Read more

Wages, Experience and Training of Women over the Lifecycle

This paper finds that on-the-job training can help mitigate some of the negative career effects of having children, especially for women who left education at the end of high school. The researchers used data from 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey between 1991 and 2008, which contains information on the employment, education, training … Read more

Rent Sharing and Inclusive Growth

This paper looks at the extent to which wages are affected by profits in major British firms – a process known as ‘rent-sharing.’ It finds this happens on a much smaller scale today than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. The researchers used data from a panel of the top 300 publicly-quoted British companies … Read more

Destination as a process: Sibling similarity in early socioeconomic trajectories

This paper finds that when trying to better understand how individuals achieve a social position, it is key to consider not just where they start and finish, but how their lives unfold and change over time. The research makes use of rich Finnish register data to compare the education, work and earnings between the ages … Read more

Discrimination in the hiring of older jobseekers: Combining a survey experiment with a natural experiment in Switzerland

Authors: Daniel Oesch,
Issue: 2019
Themes: ,

This paper looks at different explanations for why older jobseekers may struggle to find a new job if they are out of work, and concludes that this group is at a significant disadvantage when compared to younger workers with similar qualifications. The researchers tested three theories: that employers may prefer to recruit internally; that older … Read more

The Complexity of Employment & Family Life Courses across 20th Century Europe: An Update

It is a common perception in public debate that lives have become more unstable over the past decades. The authors put this to a broad empirical test using data from 30 European countries to ask, whether family life and employment have indeed become more unstable over time, or if differences across countries remain greater. The … Read more

Intersectional inequalities in work and family life courses by gender and race

This paper looks at the different privileges and constraints that men and women face as they juggle the demands of jobs and careers with having a family. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), the researchers examine the gender and race inequalities facing people in the United States and show that, in … Read more

Divorced and Unemployed: the Declining Association between Two Critical Lifecourse States in the UK, 1984-2017

This paper aims to establish the prevalence of people in the UK who are either divorced or separated and also unemployed (DSU). It also investigates whether education level or gender influences the likelihood of an individual being part of this sub-group of the population. Using data covering the period 1984-2017 from large-scale national surveys in … Read more