The analysis uses a unique set of data matching mothers and their young adult children to study the impact of family background on young people's educational attainments. The data is derived from the first five years (1991-95) of the British Household Panel Study. Mother's education is found to...

The paper examines gender differences in intra-firm and inter-firm job changes, including worker-initiated and firm-initiated separations, for white full-time British workers over the period 1991-96. We document four main findings. First, job mobility is high for both men and women, with more...

We show how changes in the educational composition of the labour force affect both the level and the behaviour over time of aggregate unemployment series. We also demonstrate that if it had not been for such changes, the U.S. unemployment series would look "European" since the within-group...

The paper extends the theoretical approach in Lazear (1986, 1996) to show that jobs with performance related pay (PRP) attract workers of higher unobservable ability, and also induce workers to provide greater effort. We then test some of the predictions of this model against data from the...

This paper examines the role of assortative mating over the past two decades in explaining the observed rise of income inequality for married couples in the United States. Using CPS data for survey years 1976-1992, it shows that wives' income has contributed to equalize the distribution of...

We investigate the lifetime incidence of single motherhood and the stepfamily formation in Great Britain using both retrospective and panel information contained in the British Household Panel Study, 1991-94. Our analysis indicates that about 40 percent of mothers will spend some time as a...

This paper uses the retrospective work history data from the British Household Panel Survey to examine patterns of job mobility and job tenure for men and women over the twentieth century. British men and women hold an average of five jobs over their lifetimes, and half of all lifetime job...

This paper uses a new source of data to study the dramatic increase in cohabiting unions in Great Britain. It analyses, in turn, entry to first partnership, the stability of cohabiting unions and repartnering after cohabitation dissolution. In excess of 70% of first partnerships are now...

Using new data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) 1991--1995, we document patterns of career mobility and investigate various factors affecting the probabilities of male and female workers' promotions, quits and layoffs. We find that internal promotions account for almost two-fifths...