A Healthy Labour Market

1
A Healthy Labour Market?

• Economic Change and Welfare Reform in Scotland,
  1981-2001

2
Overview

• Trends in unemployment permanent sickness
• Labour market accounts as a descriptive tool
• Highlight persistence across time family
  effects
• Implications for public health

3
Unemployment.
4
Permanent sickness
5
Labour market accounts

• Employment Change
• Change in working age population
• Increased in-commuting
• - Withdrawal into permanent sickness
• Exits from other forms inactivity
• Change in unemployment
• All figures rounded to nearest thousand.

Sources 1981, 1991 and 2001 Census (including
SWS).
6
Scotland,1981-01 gender
Sources 1981, 1991 and 2001 Census (including
SWS).
7
Men,1981-01 by region
Sources 1981, 1991 and 2001 Census (including
SWS).
8
LMAs what happened?

• Net employment gain conceals gender and spatial
  differences
• Men more likely to withdraw into both permanent
  sickness and other forms of inactivity
• Women both winners and losers
• But potential household effect
• Differences in withdrawal type by place
• Lothian males, early retirement
• Strathclyde males, permanent sickness

9
Resilient across time
Sources DWP claimant count Future Skills
Scotland
10
And between generations?
Likelihood of claiming IB at age 29 in 1999/00,
Great Britain
Number of cases 4,141 Nagelkerkes R²
0.097 -2LL776.972 LL Chi-squared74.984
Sources British Cohort Study 1970 1986, 1996
1999/00
11
Conclusions

• Economic change can result in changes in both
  unemployment and economic inactivity
• Problematic for public health as well as the
  labour market
• Value in disaggregating change by place and
  gender

12
So what?

• Promote full employment by creating jobs as well
  as making people more employable
• Protect the health of the unemployed
  inactive
• Challenge the stigma of unemployment
• Avoiding a distinction between deserving and
  undeserving sick