The decline in male employment in Australia: A cohort analysis

Abstract

We use Census data to investigate the sources of the decline in the level of employment of working age males in Australia in recent decades. Alternative measures of the male employment rate are considered before settling on two complementary measures: the full-time employment rate and the full-time equivalent employment rate. The latter measure weights part-time jobs according to the fraction of a full-time job they represent. Models of the determinants of these two employment rates are estimated using data from the Censuses conducted between 1971 and 2001. We construct a pseudo panel by 'stacking' the seven Census data sets (Deaton, 1997; Kapteyn, et al., 2005). This facilitates the tracing..