The opportunity costs of rearing British children, in terms of cash earnings forgone by their mother, are estimated for a typical family. Data from the 1980 Women and Employment Survey provide estimates for hourly pay as a function of work experience and current hours of work. In addition, these...

This paper analyses the welfare effects of changes in cross-sectional wage dispersion, using a class of tractable heterogeneous-agent economies. We emphasize a trade-off in the welfare calculation that arises when labour supply is endogenous. On the one hand, as wage uncertainty rises, so does...

This Paper explores the implications of the recent sharp rise in US wage inequality for welfare and the cross-sectional distributions of hours worked, consumption and earnings. From 1967 to 1996 cross-sectional dispersion of earnings increased more than wage dispersion, due to a rise in the...

This paper develops an analytical framework to study consumption and labour supply in a rich class of heterogeneous-agent economies with partial insurance. The environment allows for trade in non-contingent and state-contingent bonds, for permanent and transitory idiosyncratic productivity...

Data on the life-cycle profiles of inequality in wages, earnings, hours worked and consumption contains precious information for answering questions about the ability of households to insure labor market risk and about the sources of this risk. This Paper demonstrates that the choice of whether...

This paper emphasises some of the outstanding issues on the agenda for research on the labour force in Britain. It surveys topics but not results and does not attempt to review the literature or current research. Human resources are defined as the potential for creating economic welfare through...

This paper examines the economic rationale for concern about the falling rate of growth of Europe's population. It also assembles demographic and economic time-series data for the countries of Eastern and Western Europe during the postwar period. The consequences of demographic developments for...

The object of this paper is to see how far developments in the labour market can help to explain the fluctuations in births which have been experienced over the period 1952-1980 in England and Wales. We examine separately the period rate of childless women proceeding to the first birth, mothers...