Population ageing increases fiscal pressure by increasing the aged to working-age ratio, which simultaneously reduces the growth in government revenue and increases government social outlays. This study evaluates proposed tax and economic growth policies to meet the population ageing induced...

Of the three major age groups, youth (aged 15-24), experienced the largest fall in labour force participation and accounted for the lion’s share of the aggregate decline. Consequently, an understanding of the factors behind this development is essential to an overall understanding of the fall...

The choice of the best measures of labour force, work force and unemployment has been the subject of intense debate in the formulation of employment strategies and preparation of plan documents. A new set of measures based on a concept of Modified Current Weekly Status (MCWS) are suggested in...

The female labour force participation rate (LFPR) displays a high degree of variation across regions. Our paper contributes to an understanding of regional determinants of female labour supply by looking at Austria’s 121 political districts. As predicted by theory, the aggregate wage level has...

A major development in the Canadian labour market in the 1990s has been the decline in labour force participation. This issue of Canadian Business Economics consists of a symposium of articles that explore this issue. The idea for this symposium came out of a December 1997 workshop on labour...

Labour force participation rates vary greatly by age, with persons 55 and over having much lower participation rates than younger persons. Consequently, changes in the demographic composition of the population can exert a long-run effect on aggregate participation rates. In the third article of...

In contrast to the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s, the aggregate participation rate in the United States actually rose slightly (up 0.5 percentage points between 1989 and 1997). This US experience provides a useful benchmark for the analysis of the Canadian...

The participation rate of women aged 25-64 rose greatly in the 1970s and 1980s, but has stagnated in the 1990s. In principle, this development could reflect either the poor growth performance of the economy this decade or the completion of the integration of women into the labour force. In the...

Cyclical, policy changes, and structural factors have been put forward to explain the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s. In the first article in the symposium, Pierre Fortin and Mario Fortin attempt to determine the relative importance of these three types of factors...

Using data on educational attainment and labour market aggregates, we examine if advantages reflected in age structure – enormity of youth population in India – is converted into labour market outcomes. The study is descriptive in nature, unravelling the pattern of educational attainment of...