From 1978 to 2000 the fraction of adult men in full-year non-employment increased from 17.1 to 21.6 percent. Previous research focused on the role of disability insurance policy and wage structure changes to explain this increase. Using Current Population Surveys from 1979 to 2003 we assess how much of the changes in full-year non-employment can be explained by demographic changes, possibly linked to health. With our empirical strategy we examine how 1978 to 2000 changes in demographic characteristics would have changed the distribution of weeks worked if policies and macroeconomic conditions remained as they were in 1978. For prime-aged men, we find changes in age, race, and ethnicity can “explain” 14 to 33 percent of the increase in full-year non-employment, without any change in policy or wage structure. For prime-aged women, changes in demographics also would have predicted increases in full-year nonemployment, when in fact we saw dramatic decreases.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in its series Working Paper Series with number
WP-04-23.
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.:
Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Mehmet Yorukoglu, 2003.
"Engines of Liberation,"
RCER Working Papers
503, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
[Downloadable!]
Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Mehmet Yorukoglu, 2005.
"Engines of Liberation,"
Review of Economic Studies,
Blackwell Publishing, vol. 72(1), pages 109-133, 01.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)