IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/87.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why has the female unemployment rate fallen so much in Britain?

Author

Listed:
  • Phil Evans

Abstract

A decrease in female unemployment wholly accounts for the fall in total UK unemployment between its 1984 and 1993 peaks. This fall is associated with a fall in the female inflow rate, is concentrated among women with young children, and is equally evident for all skill groups. These trends cannot be explained by cyclical factors, rather, it is argued that improvements in the provision of workplace childcare have made it easier for mothers with young children to return to work. This reduction in labour market frictions could mean that the natural rate of unemployment has fallen.

Suggested Citation

  • Phil Evans, 1998. "Why has the female unemployment rate fallen so much in Britain?," Bank of England working papers 87, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:87
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/1998/wp87.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Burda, Michael & Wyplosz, Charles, 1994. "Gross worker and job flows in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1287-1315, June.
    2. McCall, Brian P, 1990. "Occupational Matching: A Test of Sorts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(1), pages 45-69, February.
    3. Peter Robinson, 1997. "The Myth of Parity of Esteem: Earnings and Qualifications," CEP Discussion Papers dp0354, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. J.E. Haskel, 1995. "The Decline in Unskilled Employment in UK Manufacturing," Working Papers 344, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    5. Burgess, Simon & Rees, Hedley, 1997. "Transient Jobs and Lifetime Jobs: Dualism in the British Labour Market," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 59(3), pages 309-328, August.
    6. Machin, Steve, 1994. "Changes in the Relative Demand for Skills in the UK Labour Market," CEPR Discussion Papers 952, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Nickell, Stephen & Bell, Brian, 1995. "The Collapse in Demand for the Unskilled and Unemployment across the OECD," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 40-62, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria Guti'rrez-DomSnech & Brian Bell, 2004. "Female labour force participation in the United Kingdom: evolving characteristics or changing behaviour?," Bank of England working papers 221, Bank of England.
    2. David Campbell & Alan Carruth & Andrew Dickerson & Francis Green, 2007. "Job insecurity and wages," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(518), pages 544-566, March.
    3. Stephen P Millard, 2000. "The effects of increased labour market flexibility in the United Kingdom: theory and practice," Bank of England working papers 109, Bank of England.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pablo Burriel-Llombart & Jonathan Thomas, 2001. "Skill imbalances in the UK labour market: 1979-99," Bank of England working papers 145, Bank of England.
    2. Ide Kearney, 1997. "Shifts in the Demand for Skilled Labour in the Irish Manufacturing Sector: 1979-1990," Papers WP083, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    3. Schimmelpfennig, Axel, 1998. "Skill-biased technical change vs. structural change: Insights from a new view of the structure of an economy," Kiel Working Papers 868, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Mariacristina Piva & Marco Vivarelli, 2004. "The determinants of the skill bias in Italy: R&D, organisation or globalisation?," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 329-347.
    5. Paul Ryan, 2001. "The School-to-Work Transition: A Cross-National Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(1), pages 34-92, March.
    6. Knut Røed & Tao Zhang, 2000. "What Hides Behind the Rate of Unemployment? Micro Evidence from Norway," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 26, pages 143-170.
    7. Mellander, Erik, 1999. "The multi-dimensional nature of labor demand and skill-biased technical change," Working Paper Series 1999:9, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    8. Longhi, Simonetta & Brynin, Malcolm, 2006. "The wage effects of graduate competition," ISER Working Paper Series 2006-58, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    9. Jari Vainiomaki, 1999. "Technology and Skill Upgrading: Results from Linked Worker-Plant Data for Finnish Manufacturing," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: The Creation and Analysis of Employer-Employee Matched Data, pages 115-145, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    10. Craig de Laine & Patrick Laplagne & Susan Stone, 2001. "The increasing demand for skilled workers in Australia: the role of technical change," Labor and Demography 0105005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Marco Manacorda & Alan Manning, 1999. "Just Cant Get Enough:More On Skill-Biassed Change and Labour Market Performance," CEP Discussion Papers dp0412, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Monastiriotis, Vassilis, 2000. "Inter- And Intra-Regional Wage Inequalities In The Uk: An Examination Of The Sources Of Uk Wage Inequalities And Their Evolution," ERSA conference papers ersa00p228, European Regional Science Association.
    13. Roger Bjørnstad, 2000. "The Effect of Skill Mismatch on Wages in a small open Economy with Centralized Wage Setting: The Norwegian Case," Discussion Papers 270, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    14. Gerlach, Knut & Jirjahn, Uwe, 1998. "Technischer Fortschritt, Arbeitsorganisation und Qualifikation : eine empirische Analyse für das Verarbeitende Gewerbe Niedersachsens (Technological progress, organisation of labour, and qualification," Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 31(3), pages 426-437.
    15. Erik Mellander, 2000. "The Multi-Dimensional Nature of Labor Demand and Skill-Biased Technical Change," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0671, Econometric Society.
    16. Mariacristina Piva & Marco Vivarelli, 2002. "The Skill Bias: Comparative evidence and an econometric test," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 347-357.
    17. Dennis Snower, 1996. "The modern welfare state: Problems and suggested reforms," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 207-226, October.
    18. Alexandra Fedorets & Franziska Lottmann & Michael Stops, 2019. "Job matching in connected regional and occupational labour markets," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(8), pages 1085-1098, August.
    19. Stephen Nickell, 1997. "Unemployment and Labor Market Rigidities: Europe versus North America," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 55-74, Summer.
    20. Sergio Destefanis & Matteo Fragetta & Giuseppe Mastromatteo & Nazzareno Ruggiero, 2020. "The Beveridge curve in the OECD before and after the great recession," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(3), pages 411-436, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:87. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.