Labour Market Transitions for Disadvantaged Groups

Our research

The project will study how the disadvantages suffered by some (identified by health & disability status, caring responsibilities, migrant status and ethnicity) can vary over their life course or change in relation to factors such as household circumstances or geographical context. We will analyse the impact of different forms of disadvantage on labour market outcomes, measured using levels of receipt for a range of benefits related to non-working status.

This work has relevance to employment and welfare policy but also to other areas, notably health and social care. It has been designed in close collaboration with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It is part of a wider ADR-UK initiative involving researchers within each of the ADR partnerships across the devolved nations collaborating on research with the same data collection, ONS’s Census, Benefits and Incomes dataset.

There will be three areas of work:

• we will be tackling methodological issues concerning the identification of disadvantaged groups in these data and the construction of measures of labour market transitions using data from the welfare benefits system;
• we will analyse how labour market transitions or trajectories vary by different forms of disadvantage; and
• we will examine how changes in the benefit system impact on labour market transitions and outcomes for different disadvantaged groups.

Data this research aims to link and analyse

The project will use the 2011 Census linked to Benefits and Income – England and Wales (CBI) dataset, which covers the working-age population for England and Wales and comprises 2011 Census records linked with annual summaries of welfare benefit receipt for 2011-16. The CBI is a reduced version of the dataset used for the Race Disparity Audit, which was published in 2017.

Research team

Professor Nick Bailey, Serena Pattaro and Gina Anghelescu.

Publications, Outputs and Media Coverage