Immigrant Job Search in the UK

Most immigrant groups in the UK experience higher unemployment rates than otherwise similar UK born whites. Empirical research to date has attributed this finding to discrimination, lack of English Language fluency and the (non-) transferability of skills acquired before immigration. In this paper, we investigate how the job search methods of unemployed white and ethnic minority immigrants, and their success in exiting unemployment, compare with the UK born, using the panel element of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, pooled over 1997-2001. We condition, amongst other things, on some observable immigrant characteristics and discuss the policy implications of our findings.unemployment, job search, immigrants

Evidence on the Long Shadow of Poor Mental Health across Three Generations

Individuals suffering from mental health problems are often severely limited in their social and economic functioning. Mental health problems can develop early in life, are frequently chronic in nature, and have an established hereditary component. The extent to which mental illness runs in families could therefore help explain the widely discussed intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic disadvantage. Using data from three generations contained in the 1970 British Cohort Study, we estimate the intergenerational correlation of mental health between mothers, their children, and their grandchildren. We find that the intergenerational correlation in mental health is about 0.2, and that the probability of feeling depressed is 63 percent higher for children whose mothers reported the same symptom 20 years earlier. Moreover, grandmother and grandchild mental health are strongly correlated, but this relationship appears to work fully through the mental health of the parent. Using grandmother mental health as an instrument for maternal mental health in a model of grandchild mental health confirms the strong intergenerational correlation. We also find that maternal and own mental health are strong predictors of adulthood socioeconomic outcomes. Even after controlling for parental socioeconomic status, own educational attainment, and own mental health (captured in childhood and adulthood), our results suggest that a one standard deviation reduction in maternal mental health reduces household income for their adult offspring by around 2 percent.intergenerational transmission, mobility, mental health, economic outcomes

Happiness Dynamics with Quarterly Life Event Data

This paper addresses the question of when and to what extent individuals are affected by major positive and negative life events, including changes in financial situation, marital status, death of child or spouse and being a victim of crime. The key advantage of our data is that we are able to identify these events on a quarterly basis rather than on the yearly basis used by previous studies. We find evidence that life events are not randomly distributed, that individuals to a large extent anticipate major events and that they quickly adapt. These effects have important implications for the calculation of monetary values needed to compensate individuals for life events such as crime or death of spouse. We find that our new valuation methodology that incorporates these dynamic factors produces considerably smaller compensation valuations than those calculated using the standard approach.life satisfaction, life events, adaptation, compensation

Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications

There is now a great deal of micro-econometric evidence, both cross-section and panel, showing that income is positively correlated with well-being. Yet the famous Easterlin paradox shows essentially no change in average happiness at the country level, despite spectacular rises in per capita GDP. We argue that survey well-being questions are indeed good proxy measures of utility, and resolve the Easterlin paradox by appealing to income comparisons: these can be to others (social comparisons) or to oneself in the past (habituation). We review a substantial amount of econometric, experimental and neurological literature consistent with comparisons, and then spell out the implications for a wide range of economic issues.income ; happiness ; social comparisons ; habituation ; economic policy

To Teach or not to Teach? Panel Data Evidence on the Quitting Decision

The question we address in this paper is which factors influence the quitting decision of public sector teachers in England and Wales, using a nationally representative panel data set over 1997-2003. We document the outcomes of former teachers, fit single and competing-risks duration models and examine the influence of relative pay on retention. Surprisingly, we find that teachers who move to outside employment earn 22% less pay, work longer hours, in largely nonprofessional occupations and mainly stay within the public sector. We estimate that a 10% increase in teachers’ relative pay would reduce annual quitting rates by less than 1%.Teachers, Panel Data, Wages, Quitting

Mental Health and Labour Market Participation: Evidence from IV Panel Data Models

A large body of empirical research links mental health and labour market outcomes; however, there are few studies that effectively control for the two-way causality between work and health and the existence of unobserved individual characteristics that might jointly determine health and labour market outcomes. In this study, we estimate the effect of mental health on labour market participation using various models, including instrumental variable models that exploit individual variation observed in panel data. We find robust evidence that a reduction in mental health has a substantial negative impact on the probability of actively participating in the labour market. We calculate that a one standard deviation decrease in mental health decreases the probability of participation by around 17 percentage points. This effect is larger for females and for older individuals. We therefore provide robust evidence that there are substantial costs due to the lost productivity resulting from poor mental health.measurement error, mental health, labour market participation, causality

Destined for (Un)Happiness: Does Childhood Predict Adult Life Satisfaction?

In this paper we address the question of how much of adult life satisfaction is predicted by childhood traits, parental characteristics and family socioeconomic status. Given the current focus of many national governments on measuring population well-being, and renewed focus on effective policy interventions to aid disadvantaged children, we study a cohort of children born in a particular week in 1958 in Britain who have been repeatedly surveyed for 50 years. Importantly, at four points in their adult lives this cohort has been asked about their life satisfaction (at ages 33, 42, 46, and 50). A substantive finding is that characteristics of the child and family at birth predict no more than 1.2% of the variance in average adult life satisfaction. A comprehensive set of child and family characteristics at ages 7, 11 and 16 increases the predictive power to only 2.8%, 4.3% and 6.8%, respectively. We find that the conventional measures of family socioeconomic status, in the form of parental education, occupational class and family income, are not strong predictors of adult life satisfaction. However, we find robust evidence that non-cognitive skills as measured by childhood behavioural-emotional problems, and social maladjustment, are powerful predictors of whether a child grows up to be a satisfied adult. We also find that some aspects of personality are important predictors. Adding contemporaneous adulthood variables for health and socio-economic status increases the predictability of average life satisfaction to 15.6%, while adding long-lags of life satisfaction increases the predictive power to a maximum of 35.5%. Repeating our analyses using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study confirms our main findings. Overall, the results presented in the paper point to average adult life satisfaction not being strongly predictable from a wide-range of childhood and family characteristics by age 16, which implies that there is high equality of opportunity to live a satisfied life, at least for individuals born in Britain in 1958 and 1970.childhood, socioeconomic status, life satisfaction, non-cognitive, cognitive