Duncan McVicar

Why Have UK Disability Benefit Rolls Grown so Much

Over the last 30 years many countries - including the UK - have seen a dramatic rise in the share of the working age population receiving sickness and disability benefits (hereafter disability benefits). This is despite health levels that are generally thought to be slowly improving. This paper describes the time path of UK disability benefit rolls and explores the existing UK literature together with literature from the USA in search of potential explanations for it. Since the early 1990s, despite a number of detailed descriptive studies, surprisingly little attention has been paid to quantifying the importance of the different factors believed to be driving the UK benefit roll growth. This is all the more surprising given the continued growth and the level of policy attention recently and currently devoted to disability benefits in the UK. Copyright 2007 The Author. Journal compilation

My Brilliant Career: Characterizing the Early Labor Market Trajectories of British Women From Generation X:

This article uses longitudinal data from the British Cohort Study to examine the early labor market trajectories—the careers—of more than 5,000 women aged 16 to 29 years. Conventional event history approaches focus on particular transitions, the return to work after childbirth, for example, whereas the authors treat female careers more holistically, using sequence methods and cluster analysis to arrive at a rich but readily interpretable description of the data. The authors’ typology presents a fuller picture of the underlying heterogeneity of female career paths that may not be revealed by more conventional transition-focused methods. Furthermore, the authors contribute to the small but growing literature on sequence analysis of female labor force participation by using their typology to show how careers are related to family background and school experiences.

Disability benefit growth and disability reform in the US: lessons from other OECD nations

Unsustainable growth in program costs and beneficiaries, together with a growing recognition that even people with severe impairments can work, led to fundamental disability policy reforms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. In Australia, rapid growth in disability recipiency led to more modest reforms. Here we describe the factors driving unsustainable DI program growth in the U.S., show their similarity to the factors that led to unsustainable growth in these other four OECD countries, and discuss the reforms each country implemented to regain control over their cash transfer disability program. Although each country took a unique path to making and implementing fundamental reforms, shared lessons emerge from their experiences.JEL codesJ14, J18

Part-time Work During Post-compulsory Education and Examination Performance: Help or Hindrance?

This paper examines the effects on examination performance of having a part-time job whilst in full-time post-sixteen education, using new data on young people in Northern Ireland. Around 35% engaged in part time employment during their education spell, compared to over 60% found by recent GB studies. This may be related to Northern Irelands comparatively slack youth labour market and might reflect part-time employment levels in other peripheral regions. Our estimations suggest working part-time per se is not detrimental to examination performance, although working long hours is. Policy makers might improve educational performance by reducing incentives to work long hours. Copyright 2002 by Scottish Economic Society.

Value added in further education and vocational training in Northern Ireland

At the age of 16, many young people in the UK decide to leave school and enter vocational education or training, either at a Further Education (FE) college, or on a Government training scheme. In spite of the size and importance of this group, the current debate about education and training standards has tended to focus more on how to improve schools, largely neglecting the potential contribution to be made by the FE and vocational training sectors. This study seeks to begin to redress this imbalance by examining the extent to which those young people leaving school and entering vocational education or training at 16 obtained further qualifications up to the age of 18. In particular, there is an examination of whether the choice between FE and Government training schemes at age 16 influences the subsequent success of young people in terms of gaining additional qualifications. Adopting an ordered probit approach to modelling qualifications levels, the results contradict the (somewhat pessimistic) common perception of Government training schemes. In particular, no significant differences per se are found between the value added performance of FE colleges and Government training schemes.

Choice of contracts in the British National Health Service: an empirical study.

Following major reforms of the British National Health Service (NHS) in 1990, the roles of purchasing and providing health services were separated, with the relationship between purchasers and providers governed by contracts. Using a mixed multinomial logit analysis, we show how this policy shift led to a selection of contracts that is consistent with the predictions of a simple model, based on contract theory, in which the characteristics of the health services being purchased and of the contracting parties influence the choice of contract form. The paper thus provides evidence in support of the practical relevance of theory in understanding health care market reform.

Non-Standard “Contingent” Employment and Job Satisfaction: A Panel Data Analysis

It is widely assumed that contingent forms of employment, such as fixed-term contracts, labour-hire and casual employment, are associated with low quality jobs. This hypothesis is tested using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally representative household panel survey covering a country with a high incidence of non-standard employment. Ordered logit regression models of job satisfaction are estimated that hold constant all time-invariant individual differences as well as a range of observed time-varying characteristics. The results indicate that, among males, both casual employees and labour-hire workers (but not fixed-term contract workers) report noticeably lower levels of job satisfaction. Restricting the sample to persons aged 20-59 increases the estimated magnitudes of these effects. Negative effects for women are mainly restricted to labour-hire workers. We also show that the relationships between job satisfaction and contract type vary with educational attainment and the length of job tenure. Working hours arrangements also mediate the relationship.

HOW WELL HAS THE NEW DEAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE WORKED IN THE UK REGIONS

The UK New Deal for Young People (NDYP) is a mandatory active labour market programme aimed at helping unemployed young people into jobs. This paper examines how the programme affected hazard rates for unemployment exits across the UK regions in its first few years. The regional focus is motivated by the belief that differences between regional labour markets, between claimants, and differences in implementation may have led to differences in programme outcomes. The paper shows that NDYP increased outflows from unemployment in all regions but that its impact was larger in some regions than in others. The paper also shows differential NDYP impacts across the regions on destination-specific hazard rates from unemployment to employment, to education/training, to inactivity and to ‘other’. Possible explanations for these results are then discussed.

Spillovers and foreign direct investment in UK manufacturing

Evidence is presented for the existence of negative spillovers through both foreign direct investment (FDI) and goods imports for UK manufacturing sectors. Support is given to the argument that FDI and imports have a market-stealing effect on domestic firms and can therefore reduce productivity.

Is there an educational penalty for being suspended from school

Suspension from school is a commonly used, yet controversial, school disciplinary measure. This paper uses unique survey data to estimate the impact of suspension on the educational outcomes of those suspended. It finds that while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the relationship is unlikely to be causal, but rather likely stems from differences in the characteristics of those suspended compared to those not suspended. Moreover, there is no evidence that suspension is associated with larger educational penalties for young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged family backgrounds. These results hold regardless of whether self-reported suspension or mother-reported suspension is considered. The absence of a clear negative causal impact of suspension on educational outcomes suggests that suspension may continue to play a role in school discipline without harming the educational prospects of those sanctioned.