Who suffers during recessions? Economic downturns, job loss, and cardiovascular disease in older Americans

Job loss in the years before retirement has been found to increase risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), but some studies suggest that CVD mortality among older workers declines during recessions. We hypothesized that recessionary labor market conditions were associated with reduced CVD risk among persons who did not experience job loss and increased CVD risk among persons who lost their jobs. In our analyses, we used longitudinal, nationally representative data from Americans 50 years of age or older who were enrolled in the Health and Retirement Study and surveyed every 2 years from 1992 to 2010 about their employment status and whether they had experienced a stroke or myocardial infarction. To measure local labor market conditions, Health and Retirement Study data were linked to county unemployment rates. Among workers who experienced job loss, recessionary labor market conditions at the time of job loss were associated with a significantly higher CVD risk (hazard ratio = 2.54, 95% confidence interval: 1.39, 4.65). In contrast, among workers who did not experience job loss, recessionary labor market conditions were associated with a lower CVD risk (hazard ratio = 0.50, 95% confidence interval: 0.31, 0.78). These results suggest that recessions might be protective in the absence of job loss but hazardous in the presence of job loss

Employment protection and job insecurity

Government regulations are frequently seen as causes of poor economic performance. The goal of this study is to evaluate this claim focusing on one class of regulations, employment protection legislation, and their impact on labor market performance across advanced economies. Even though little is known about the causal effects of employment protection, there is a widely shared consensus that in particular young people suffer from their consequences. Focusing on the youth labor market effects of employment protection should therefore be a generous test for their alleged costs. The empirical analysis draws on two cross-national data sources, uses different estimation strategies and performs a number of robustness checks. The results indicate that there are no robust effects of job security provisions on youth unemployment or employment, neither in the cross-section nor over time. Deregulating temporary employment contracts has brought neither employment gains nor unemployment reductions, but increased labor market insecurity among young people

The Consequences of Employment Protection Legislation for the Youth Labour Market

Understanding the causes of unemployment and job insecurity among young people remains a central concern for social scientists and policy makers. This study focuses on one potential institutional cause of high youth unemployment, employment protection legislation (EPL). While many are sceptical of a link between EPL and high aggregate unemployment rates, a consensus has emerged linking EPL to high youth unemployment in particular. The review of theoretical and empirical research conducted here challenges this consensus. Search and matching theoretic explanations have difficulty making unambiguous predictions about the effects of EPL on youth unemployment and empirical research has undertaken little effort to uncover its causal effects. The empirical analysis tests for the existence of aggregate employment effects of EPL across youth labour markets using aggregate data from affluent OECD countries (1985–2007) and individual data from labour force surveys for 15 Western European countries and the U.S. (1992–2007). It conducts conventional regression analyses and also imple-ments a Difference-in-Difference design. Neither conventional nor Difference-in-Difference analyses yield any robust evidence whatsoever linking either dimension of EPL to inferior youth labour market performance, for any of the education groups or institutional conditions tested. Altogether, this study rejects the view that strict EPL is or has been the cause of high youth unemployment rates or low youth employment rates, at least for the sample of countries tested here

Educational systems and inequalities in educational attainment in Central and Eastern European countries

Before exploring the selectivity of educational attainment in detail, this article extensively describes the contours of educational systems in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. These countries provide an interesting setting in view of their post-secondary education expansion and differentiation, as well as their variation in the degree of vocational orientation at the secondary level. Drawing on high quality, national micro data, we find that students from disadvantaged family backgrounds who manage to enter post-secondary education are ‘diverted’ to second-tier post-secondary institutions, while longterm university programs are more likely to be dominated by students whose parents have an academic background. At the secondary level, we confirm the patterns of negative selection among students from lower social backgrounds into lower vocational programs. This diversion effect at the secondary level is especially pronounced in CEE countries that inherited a strong secondary vocational system and reinstalled early tracking