This paper uses microeconomic data from the British Household Panel and General Household Surveys to describe how the distribution of pay differs between the public and private sectors in 1983 and in the early 1900s
This Commentary looks at public pay in detail, tracing its trend relative to the private sector over the 1980s and 1990s and showing how the gap in pay between the public and private sectors differs dramatically across occupations, gender and education groups. These findings illustrate how misleading comparisons of public and private sector pay based on aggregate data can be.
The first half of the report sheds some new light on the following questions with a detailed and consistent comparison of income distributions in Western Germany and the UK from 1984 to 1992. To what extent was the income distribution in Western Germany similar to the UK in 1984? Did the inequality of West German incomes rise to the same extent? What was the differing role of the labour market, the tax and benefit system and demographic change in each country? The second half of the report concentrates on whether and how education, training and wage setting systems together with other institutional factors in Western Germany can explain the differences relative to the more deregulated UK labour market.
This paper uses microeconomic data from the UK Family Expenditure Surveys (FES) and the General Household Surveys (GHS) to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages.
This report shows the extent to which low pay and unemployment are related, the effects of periods out of work on future earnings and the degree to which low pay is a persistent phenomenon. Importantly it demonstrates the way in which a minimum wage might affect a much higher proportion of the population than is generally appreciated because of the way in which people move in and out of low paid work. A chapter of the report is also given over to the effects of work experience and job tenure on pay levels.
Are the provision and the extent of work-related training in the UK affected by the amount of job-to-job mobility among the work-force? Conversely, does receiving different types of work-related training make employees more or less likely to move jobs? This report examines both these questions in detail using panel data from the British Labour Force Survey and the National Child Development Survey.
It is widely accepted that an accurate assessment of the extent to which graduates benefit from higher education is crucial for the effective development of policy in this area. For the first time in the UK, this report examines two dimensions of labour market success (employment and wages) in the early 1990s for a group of 33-year-olds who undertook higher education and compares their performance with a similarly-aged group who obtained at least one (and alternatively at least two) A level qualifications but did not proceed into higher education.
Since the 1980s, there has been increased interest among unions and two opposition parties in the possibility of introducing a national minimum wage (NMW).
Work Related training is currently at the top of the political and public policy agenda. The report looks at who gets work related training in Britain, the effect it has on the subsequent employment prospects of men and women, the wage payoffs to different types of work related training, and whether it improves the wages prospects of relatively low skilled individuals.
We analyze how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household consumption and economic welfare.
The gap between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the last 25 years and the incomes of the bottom 10 per cent were no higher in 1991 than in 1967.
The gap between those who earn the most and those who earn the least in the UK is growing rapidly and in 1992 was larger than it had been at any time this century. It is one of the major factors underlying the rise in the inequality of household income and in poverty levels. This, together with its implications about the way the labour market is changing, makes it one of the most important issues facing policymakers today.