This paper argues that British "welfare to work" policies are inadequate, given the geographical concentration of worklessness in northern regions and in cities and former coalfields. While unemployment has been converging geographically, inactivity has not. All the "welfare to work" target groups--youth unemployed, long-term unemployed, lone parents, the long-term sick, and partners of the unemployed--have closely similar geographical distributions. Official arguments that there are adequate job vacancies everywhere are shown to be flawed. The geography of worklessness is largely explained by the weakness of adjustment through migration and commuting to the loss of jobs in manufacturing and mining, the cities being particularly affected by "urban rural manufacturing shift". Policy needs to promote more relevant employment in high unemployment areas, through increased spending on derelict land reclamation and on transport and other infrastructure. The case for more supportive policies towards manufacturing should also be considered. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.
Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for
download. To find whether it is available, there are three
options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page
whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be
available.
Volume (Year): 16 (2000) Issue (Month): 1 (Spring) Pages: 114-28 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)