Two Sides to Every Story: Measuring the Polarisation of Work

Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth ()
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Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth: Department of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jonathan Wadsworth and Paul Gregg

No 04/03, Royal Holloway, University of London: Discussion Papers in Economics from Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London

Abstract: Individual and household based aggregate measures of joblessness can, and do, offer conflicting signals about labour market performance if work is unequally distributed. This paper introduces a simple set of indices that can be used to measure the extent of divergence between individual and household-based jobless measures. The indices, built around a comparison of the actual household jobless rate with that which would occur if work were randomly distributed over the working age population, can be decomposed to try to identify the likely source of any disparity between non-employment rates calculated at the 2 levels of aggregation. Applying these measures to data for Britain, we show that there has been a growing disparity – polarisation - between the individual and household based jobless measures that are largely unrelated to changes in household structure or the principal characteristics associated with individual joblessness.

Keywords: Workless households Distribution of work; Polarisation; joblessness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2004-04, Revised 2004-04
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Related works:
Working Paper: Two Sides to Every Story: Measuring the Polarisation of Work (2004)
Working Paper: Two sides to every story: measuring the polarisation of work (2004)
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