Wages and the education and employment choices of young people: empirical analysis for Great Britain

This paper examines the responsiveness of the education and employment choices of young people in Great Britain to the level of wages currently available to them in the labour market. Our results show that among young males in particular, the probability of continued participation in full-time education declines significantly as the expected wage increases. The effects for young women are smaller and not statistically significant in general. In addition, we find that the probability of being inactive – not in education, employment or training – increases also with the level of expected wage, particularly in the case of young males of lower academic ability. In the light of these findings, we assess the impact of the recent introduction of a national minimum wage for 16 and 17 year olds on education and employment decisions of young men in Great Britain. Keywords; education, employment, wages, young people

Participation in further education and training: how much do gender and race matter?

This paper examines the differences in participation rates in further education and training that persist across Britain's ethnic groups, and between males and females within a given group. A statistical model of choice of post-16 activity is estimated using data on a large sample of 16 year-olds in England and Wales. The analysis shows that a significant part of the gender gap in participation rates in further education is attributable to compositional differences, in particular differences in the distribution of academic attainment levels. However, differences in participation rates between the White majority group and the ethnic minority groups in Great Britain are primarily a result of differences in the behaviour of otherwise identical individuals. Keywords; human capital, further education and training, ethnic groups, gender

Participation in further education in England and Wales: an analysis of post-war trends

The paper examines the time-series evidence relating to participation rates in further education in England and Wales, and uses cointegration analysis to identify a long-run statistical relationship in the data consistent with an augmented human-capital model. The recent rapid growth of participation is attributable largely to the improvements in GCSE attainment of the last decade, coupled with the expansion of higher education. Fluctuations in labour demand play a significant role in determining movements in participation rates over time, and the substantial rise in youth unemployment of the early notes was a contributed to the rapid growth of participation at this time

Geography and economic performance: exploratory spatial data analysis for Great Britain

This paper uses the techniques of exploratory spatial data analysis to analyse patterns of spatial association for different indicators of economic performance, and in so doing identify and describe the spatial structure of economic performance for Great Britain. This approach enables us to identify a number of significant local regimes – clusters of areas in which income per worker differs significantly from the global average – and investigate whether these come about primarily through spatial association in occupational composition or in productivity. Our results show that the contributions of occupational composition and productivity vary significantly across local regimes. The ‘winner’s circle’ of areas in the south and east of England benefits from both above average levels of productivity and better than average occupational composition, while the low income regime in the north of England suffers particularly from poor occupational composition. Keywords; regional disparities, income per worker, productivity, occupational composition, spatial autocorrelation JEL Classification: O18, O4, R11, R12

Participation in further education in England and Wales: an analysis of post-war trends

The paper examines the time-series evidence relating to participation rates in further education in England and Wales, and uses cointegration analysis to identify a long-run statistical relationship in the data consistent with an augmented human-capital model. The recent rapid growth of participation is attributable largely to the improvements in GCSE attainment of the last decade, coupled with the expansion of higher education. Fluctuations in labour demand play a significant role in determining movements in participation rates over time, and the substantial rise in youth unemployment of the early notes was a contributed to the rapid growth of participation at this time. Keywords; human capital, participation in further education, cointegration analysis

Spatial Determinants of Productivity: Analysis for the Regions of Great Britain

This paper uses NUTS3 sub-regional data for Great Britain to analyse the determinants of spatialvariations in income and productivity. We decompose the spatial variation of earnings into aproductivity effect and an occupational composition effect. For the former (but not the latter) wefind a robust relationship with proximity to economic mass, suggesting that doubling thepopulation of working age proximate to an area is associated with a 3.5% increase in productivityin the area. We measure proximity by travel time, and show that effects decline steeply with time,ceasing to be important beyond approximately 80 minutes.regional disparities, productivity, clustering

Economic Linkages Across Space

We develop a diagrammatic framework that can be used to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been the primary focus of either the theoretical or empirical literatures. We show that our general framework can be used to interpret both the New Economic Geography and Urban Systems literatures to help us understand spatial economic linkages. We then extend the theoretical framework to allow us to consider a number of additional issues which may be particularly important for analyzing the impact of policy. Such policy analysis will also require empirical work to identify the nature of key relationships. In a final section, we consider what the existing empirical literature can tell us about these relationships.Spatial linkages, Urban systems, New Economic Geography, Urban and regional policy

The Burden of Out-of-Pocket Health Spending Among Older Versus Younger Adults: Analysis from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1998-2003

Analyzes the extent to which health care spending as a share of income has differed among younger adults versus people ages 65 and older, both at a single point in time (2003) and over the six-year period from 1998 to 2003