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Reconciling Workless Measures at the Individual and Household Level: Theory and Evidence from the United States, Britain, Germany, Spain and Australia

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Author Info
Paul Gregg
Rosanna Scutella
Jonathan Wadsworth

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Abstract

Individual and household based aggregate measures of worklessness can, and do, offer conflicting signalsabout labour market performance. We outline a means of quantifying the extent of any disparity,(polarisation), in the signals stemming from individual and household-based measures of worklessness andapply this index to data from 5 countries over 25 years. Built around a comparison of the actual householdworkless rate with that which would occur if employment were randomly distributed over householdoccupants, we show that in all the countries we examine, there has been a growing disparity between theindividual and household based workless measures. The polarisation count can be decomposed to identifywhich household groups are exposed to workless concentrations and can also be used to test whichindividual characteristics account for any excess worklessness among these household groups. We showthat the incidence and magnitude of polarisation varies widely across countries, but that in all countriespolarisation has increased. For each country most of the discrepancies between the individual andhousehold workless counts stem from within-household factors, rather than from changing householdcomposition.

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Paper provided by Centre for Economic Performance, LSE in its series CEP Discussion Papers with number dp0635.

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Date of creation: May 2004
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Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0635

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Related research
Keywords: Workless households Inequality Distribution of work Polarisation Worklessness

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General
J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies

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References listed on IDEAS
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.:
  1. Peter Dawkins & Paul Gregg & Rosanna Scutella, 2002. "Employment Polarisation in Australia," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 02/050, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK. [Downloadable!]
  2. Peter Dawkins & Paul Gregg & Rosanna Scutella, 2002. "Employment Polarisation in Australia," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2002n09, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne. [Downloadable!]
  3. Danziger, Leif & Katz, Eliakim, 1996. "A theory of sex discrimination," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 57-66, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Cullen, Julie Berry & Gruber, Jonathan, 2000. "Does Unemployment Insurance Crowd Out Spousal Labor Supply?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 546-72, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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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.)

  1. Rosanna Scutella & Mark Wooden, 2006. "Effects of Household Joblessness on Subjective Well-Being," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2006n10, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne. [Downloadable!]
  2. repec:ese:iserwp: is not listed on IDEAS
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