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Carolina Zuccotti, European University Institute, Italy, Jacqueline O'Reilly, University of Sussex and Wei Xun, UCL
(Project no. 1001525)
Using the ONS LS, the project asks to what extent the impact of labour market outcomes of young individuals in 2001 on those of 2011 varies by ethnicity. Individual, household and neighbourhood information will be used to reconstruct individual's social origins (in 1971-1991), and their current environment (2001-2011).
Youth unemployment and, more generally, being out of education and of the labour market (i.e. NEET), has gained particular importance in European debates because of the findings on scarring effects. These show that poor labour market outcomes in youth or experiencing a NEET situation, can have a negative impact in later life, increasing for example the probabilities of unemployment (Gregg 2001, Furlong 2006, Eurofound 2014). However, little is known about how scarring effects might vary by a crucial characteristic, now considered in most UK labour market studies: ethnicity. In fact, while there is a vast number of studies that look at 'ethnic penalties' in unemployment for particular time-points (e.g. Carmichael and Woods 2000, Cheung and Heath 2007, Heath and Li 2010), studies that focus on the dynamics into and out of employment (Demireva and Kesler 2011) or on the impact of early labour market outcomes in later ones are less common. In this research we follow this perspective. We ask to ask to what extent the impact of labour market outcomes of young individuals in 2001 on those of 2011 varies by the ethnic group of individuals.
The analysis will be based on the ONS-Longitudinal study. We will study individuals who are between 16 and 34 years old in 2001 and follow them into 2011, when they are between 26 and 44 years old. Given that we work with second generation individuals (i.e. individuals who were either born in the UK or arrived at a very young age) and given the importance of social origins on individuals' labour market outcomes (Zuccotti 2015), we will attach household and neighbourhood information to individuals at the time when they were between 0 and 15 years old (hence in 1971-1991). Household information includes: parental social class, tenure, overcrowding and number of cars; neighbourhood information includes neighbourhood deprivation and neighbourhood ethnic composition.
The analysis will be based on descriptive statistics and on regressions (with clustered standard errors, given that we expect to have more than one measurement per individual, following Project # 0410030). Attention will be put to labour market outcomes in 2001 and 2011 and to other factors that may affect these, such as education. In particular, we seek to respond:
- How do employment scars vary by ethnic group? In particular, does the impact of being unemployed in 2001 affect differently employment probabilities in 2011 by ethnic group?
- How do occupational scars vary by ethnic group? In particular, does the impact of a low occupational status in 2001 affect differently the probability of acquiring a high occupation in 2011 by ethnic group?
The data structure will follow that used in Platt (2005, 2007) and in my own PhD thesis (Zuccotti, 2015), based on ONS-LS data. We will use the same variables as those used in the project # 0410030. We have already sent the selection of individual and household-level variables and made a specification of the geographical variables we need: neighbourhood deprivation (in quintiles, provided already by Prof. Paul Norman) and ethnic composition of the neighbourhood (also in quintiles, created by Dr. Carolina Zuccotti for the Project # 0410030).
This project emerges as a response to some results I got while doing my PhD thesis (see Chapter 3). I found that the 'ethnic penalty' in terms of employment was smaller in 2011 than in 2001 (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3), a quite surprising finding - given the context of post-crisis - but, at the same time, an encouraging finding. This project aims at exploring this change in the gap further, by having a longitudinal perspective on it.
The project is done as part of STYLE (http://www.style-research.eu/), a cross-national study involving 25 partners in more than 15 European countries. The aim of STYLE is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the causes of very high unemployment among young people and to assess the effectiveness of labour market policies designed to mitigate this phenomenon. STYLE is coordinated by Prof. Jaqueline O'Reilly; Dr. Carolina Zuccotti is a member of the project since September 2014. Following Prof. Nicola Shelton's suggestion, we have now included Wei Xun in the proposal, given some mentioned overlap in terms of research questions. We hope to have a fruitful collaboration and mutual exchange.
Although most of the data analysis will be done in 2016, we need to be able to access VML during the editing process/revisions.