The Decline of Employment Among Older People in Britain
Older men have experienced the largest falls in employment over the last twenty years. Two-fifths of men aged between 55 and 65 are without work, compared to one-fifth in 1979, equivalent to 600,000 fewer jobs. Older women have not shared in the general rise of female employment. This paper analyses the Labour Force Survey and the first six waves of the British Household Panel Survey to examine why older people's employment has fallen, which groups have been most affected, and whether these trends are likely to continue. The people most likely to leave the labour market are either (a) in the bottom quartile of the wage distribution or (b) with wages in the top half but who are also members of an occupational pension scheme. Once displaced, few older people return to work. There are instead significant transitions between unemployment, long-term sickness and retirement, almost always weakening attachment to the labour market. Furthermore, falling male employment seems to be part of an ongoing trend, rather than simply affecting one unfortunate generation.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
| Length: | |
| Date of creation: | Jan 1999 |
| Handle: | RePEc:cep:sticas:019 |
| Contact details of provider: | Web page: http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/_new/publications/default.asp
|
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.:
- Machin, Stephen, 1996. "Wage Inequality in the UK," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 47-64, Spring.
- Paul Gregg, 1994. "Share and share alike," New Economy, Institute for Public Policy Research, vol. 1(1), pages 13-19, 03.
- Richard Disney, 1995. "Occupational pension schemes: prospects and reforms in the UK," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 16(3), pages 19-39, September.
- Sarah Tanner, 1998. "The dynamics of male retirement behaviour," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 175-196, May.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cep:sticas:019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()
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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.