Projections of the future path of the gender wage gap in Great Britain

Purpose &ndash; The paper attempts to project the future trend of the gender wage gap in Great Britain up to 2031.Design/methodology/approach &ndash; The empirical analysis utilises the British Household Panel Study Wave F together with Office for National Statistics (ONS) demographic projections. The methodology combines the ONS projections with assumptions relating to the evolution of educational attainment in order to project the future distribution of human capital skills and consequently the future size of the gender wage gap.Findings &ndash; The analysis suggests that gender wage convergence will be slow, with little female progress by 2031 unless there is a large rise in returns to female experience.Originality/value &ndash; The paper has projected the pattern of male and female skill acquisition together with the associated trend in wages up to 2031.<br /

Wait no more : the use of private dental services by welfare recipients in Australia

Dental services in Australia are available both privately and publicly. However, access to public dental services, like access to public hospital services for non-urgent treatment, is subject to a considerable waiting period. Moreover, access to public dental services is restricted to certain categories of welfare beneficiaries who qualify for a health care card. Because of the waiting time for public treatment, there is a frequent call for more public dental resources. This paper addresses the issue of what the waiting time for public dental services represents. One view largely confirmed by our research is that state governments are using the waiting time as a way of trying to push more and more people into the private sector. We find that more and more health care card holders are using theprivate sector for dental services.<br /

Gender crime convergence over twenty years: evidence from Australia

Historically men have been responsible for the majority of criminal activity and dominate prison populations around the globe. The twentieth century witnessed significant male–female convergence in a myriad of positive dimensions including human capital acquisition, labour force participation and wages. This has prompted the question, to what extent are women ‘looking more like men’? In this paper we examine whether similar forces are at play in the context of criminality. We study the pattern of gender convergence in crime using rich administrative data on the population of young people in Queensland, Australia. The evidence points to a significant narrowing of the gender gap in criminal activity over the course of the last twenty years. Crime convergence occurs for broad aggregates of both property and violent crime, as well as for almost all sub-component categories. Convergence occurs largely because crime has fallen significantly for men, combined with no downward trend for women. This is confirmed by aggregate analysis of rates of offending in police force districts matched to Census data by gender between 2001 and 201

School indiscipline and crime

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Exploiting a legislative increase in the minimum dropout age in 2006, this study defines a series of regression-discontinuity specifications to show that compulsory schooling reduces crime but increases violent behaviour in school. While police records show that property and drugs offences decrease, education records indicate that violence and victimization in school increase. Thus, prior studies that fail to consider in-school behaviour may over-estimate the short-run crime-reducing impact of compulsory education

Age in cohort, school indiscipline and crime: regression-discontinuity estimates for Queensland

Youth crime involves millions of people each year, imposing extensive costs on society. This paper examines the effect of school starting age on in-school disciplinary sanctions and youth crime. Using administrative data matching education and criminal records for Queensland State secondary school students, the paper exploits school-entry administrative rules to define a regression discontinuity design. Younger pupils in cohort appear to receive more disciplinary sanctions during secondary school and to commit more crime after secondary school. A recent school-leaving age reform is also exploited to show that this crime-age profile is consistent with an incapacitation effect of school on crime

Larrikin youth: crime and Queensland's earning or learning reform

This paper analyses the impact of the introduction of an Earning or Learning reform on youth crime in Queensland, Australia. The 2006 reform increased learning and reduced earning as school participation rose post-reform, while teen employment fell. Empirical analysis of detailed administrative data reveals that criminal offending fell significantly after enactment of the reform. For males, violent, property and drug crime all declined, while the main effect for females was a significant fall in property crime. The property and drug crime falls are underpinned by a significant incapacitation effect, with some evidence of a persistent crime reduction for young men and women at later ages. Crime reduction resulting from the reform is concentrated in significant falls in the likelihood of ever offending by marginal individuals, rather than lower criminality of recalcitrant persistent offenders