Understanding Men’s Non-Employment Using Longitudinal Data

Co-funded with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth

The employment of prime-aged men has been declining since the 1980s. Economists have focused on the role of stagnant or declining real wages in discouraging work and on the underlying causes of those declining wages. However, they have paid little attention to the long-term patterns and dynamics of male prime-age non-employment and the long-term consequences of non-employment for individual men. 

Economist Ann Stevens will use longitudinal data and cohort analysis to examine the relationship between non-employment and the subsequent employment and wellbeing of prime-aged men. She aims to answer two sets of questions: First, how frequently and under what circumstances do the full-year non-employed return to employment and what wages do they earn? Second, how does non-employment affect future employment patterns and wages of these men?