Labour market disadvantage amongst disabled people: a longitudinal perspective

Considerable cross-sectional evidence has highlighted the lower employment rates and earnings amongst disabled people in Britain. But very little is known about the progression of disabled people in employment. This study uses data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to examine the labour market progression of disabled people in Britain along several dimensions: earnings growth, low-pay transition probabilities, changes in labour market participation, the rate of training and the rate of upward occupational mobility. The analysis also explores the extent of heterogeneity in the labour market progression of disabled people with respect to differences in age, education, occupation and disability severity. The evidence indicates that the earnings trajectories of disabled people lag behind those for non-disabled people, especially for men. The median annual change in earnings is 1.4 percent lower for disabled men and 0.6 percent lower for disabled women compared to non-disabled men and women respectively. Moreover, disabled people are approximately three times more likely to exit work than their non-disabled counterparts, a difference that increases markedly for more-severely disabled people. The evidence highlights the need for policy to tackle the barriers that disabled people face in the workplace, not merely in access to jobs

International money reform

Monetary policy

Labour Market Disadvantage amongst Disabled People: A longitudinal perspective

Considerable cross-sectional evidence has highlighted the lower employment rates and earnings amongst disabled people in Britain. But very little is known about the progression of disabled people in employment. This study uses data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to examine the labour market progression of disabled people in Britain along several dimensions: earnings growth, low-pay transition probabilities, changes in labour market participation, the rate of training and the rate of upward occupational mobility. The analysis also explores the extent of heterogeneity in the labour market progression of disabled people with respect to differences in age, education, occupation and disability severity. The evidence indicates that the earnings trajectories of disabled people lag behind those for non-disabled people, especially for men. The median annual change in earnings is 1.4 percent lower for disabled men and 0.6 percent lower for disabled women compared to non-disabled men and women respectively. Moreover, disabled people are approximately three times more likely to exit work than their non-disabled counterparts, a difference that increases markedly for more-severely disabled people. The evidence highlights the need for policy to tackle the barriers that disabled people face in the workplace, not merely in access to jobs.disability, labour market, longitudinal, dynamics

Income dynamics and the life cycle

This paper argues that our understanding of income and poverty dynamics benefits from taking a life cycle perspective. A person¿s age and family circumstances ¿ the factors that shape their life cycle ¿ affect the likelihood of experiencing key life events, such as partnership formation, having children, or retirement; this in turn affects their probability of experiencing rising, falling, or other income trajectories. Using ten waves of the British Household Panel Survey, we analyse the income trajectories of people at different stages in their lives in order to build a picture of income dynamics over the whole life cycle. We find that particular life events are closely associated with either rising or falling trajectories, but that there is considerable heterogeneity in income trajectories following these different events. Typically, individuals experiencing one of these life events are around twice as likely to experience a particular income trajectory, but most individuals will not follow the trajectory most commonly associated with that life event. This work improves our understanding of the financial impact of different life events and provides an indication of how effectively the welfare state cushions people against the potentially adverse impact of certain events

Health supplier quality and the distribution of child health

There is emerging evidence to suggest that initial differentials between the health of poor and more affluent children in the UK do not widen over early childhood. One reason may be that through the universal public funded health care system all children have access to equally effective primary care providers. This paper examines this explanation. The analysis has two components. It first examines whether children from poorer families have access to general practitioners of a similar quality to children from richer families. It then examines whether the quality of primary care to which a child has access has an impact on their health at birth and on their health during early childhood. The results suggest that children from poor families do not have access to markedly worse quality primary care, and further, that the quality of primary care does not appear to have a large effect on differentials in child health in early childhood.primary care quality, child health

Automatic identification and enumeration of algae

A good understanding of the population dynamics of algal communities is vital in many ecological and pollution studies of freshwater and oceanic systems. Present methods require manual counting and identification of algae and can take up to 90 min to obtain a statistically reliable count on a complex population. Several alternative techniques to accelerate the process have been tried on marine samples but none have been completely successful because insufficient effort has been put into verifying the technique before field trials. The objective of the present study has been to assess the potential of in vivo fluorescence of algal pigments as a means of automatically identifying algae. For this work total fluorescence spectroscopy was chosen as the observation technique

The Opioid Crisis in Rural and Small Town America

In this brief, authors Shannon Monnat and Khary Rigg examine rural versus urban differences in opioid mortality and identify challenges for dealing with the opioid crisis in rural areas. They report that, in 2016, opioid mortality rates were higher in urban than in rural counties, particularly in the Midwest, but rates have increased more in rural than in urban counties over the past two decades. Since 2010, the share of drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids has declined, but the share of deaths involving heroin and synthetic opioids has spiked in both rural and urban areas. The most dramatic increases in opioid deaths were in the rural Midwest, where they were 16 times higher in 2016 than in 1999, and in the rural Northeast, where they were 11.4 times higher. Prescription opioids are involved in a larger share of rural than urban drug overdose deaths, whereas heroin and synthetic opioids (such as fentanyl) account for a larger share of urban deaths. Over half of drug overdose deaths involve multiple drugs. Policy initiatives to date have been largely ineffective at addressing the opioid crisis in many of the hardest-hit rural communities, and the recent surge in fentanyl overdoes in large urban areas may be a precursor of what to expect in at-risk rural communities in the coming years. Existing interventions are unlikely to be effective without addressing the underlying social and economic factors that are plaguing the hardest-hit areas

The Financial Crisis and Money Markets in Emerging Asia

Asian money markets entered the financial crisis in better shape than markets in other regions due to a substantial build-up of savings and liquidity in their banking systems, as well as a greater domestic focus in most of the region’s markets. However, despite the higher liquidity and lower levels of global integration, the effects of the crisis in Asia were severe and followed a similar path observed in international markets. The further development of money markets, particularly in less developed economies, will require policies and initiatives that add liquidity and depth to attract broader participation from both domestic and international investors—including regional cooperation, a robust regulatory architecture, and foreign competition to expedite the development of less developed money markets. Risk management and liquidity assumptions also need to be enhanced to establish buffers that will withstand more severe and prolonged external shocks and disruptions to external financing.Money market; money market participants; components of money markets; financial crisis

Income Dynamics and the Life Cycle

This paper argues that our understanding of income and poverty dynamics benefits from taking a life cycle perspective. A person¿s age and family circumstances ¿ the factors that shape their life cycle ¿ affect the likelihood of experiencing key life events, such as partnership formation, having children, or retirement; this in turn affects their probability of experiencing rising, falling, or other income trajectories. Using ten waves of the British Household Panel Survey, we analyse the income trajectories of people at different stages in their lives in order to build a picture of income dynamics over the whole life cycle. We find that particular life events are closely associated with either rising or falling trajectories, but that there is considerable heterogeneity in income trajectories following these different events. Typically, individuals experiencing one of these life events are around twice as likely to experience a particular income trajectory, but most individuals will not follow the trajectory most commonly associated with that life event. This work improves our understanding of the financial impact of different life events and provides an indication of how effectively the welfare state cushions people against the potentially adverse impact of certain events.income dynamics, life cycle, poverty

Understanding socio-economic inequalities in childhood respiratory health

Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood. Recent evidence has shown a socio-economic gradient in its distribution. This paper examines whether a number of factors argued to have led to a rise in the incidence of asthma might also explain the social gradient. Several of these have been the object of policy intervention, though not necessarily with the aim of lowering childhood respiratory conditions. Using a large cohort study (the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) we find significant inequalities in three respiratory conditions in middle childhood. We investigate eight potential mediating factors: exposure to other children in infancy, child's diet, poor housing conditions, maternal smoking, parental history of asthma, poor child health at birth, maternal age at child's birth and local deprivation. We find that each of these alone typically explains a relatively modest part of each respiratory inequality, with child's diet, local deprivation and maternal smoking generally the most important. But taken together, the mediating factors account for a substantial part of the respiratory inequalities. So the socio-economic gradient appears to operate through a number of inter-correlated pathways, some of which may be amenable to policy intervention.Asthma, wheeze, socio-economic inequalities, mediating