erc/metu
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN ECONOMICS  IV
September 13-16, 2000, Ankara

The Mobility of French Youth "in" and "out" of the Labour Market

Anna Cristina D'Addio (IRES, CORE, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium)
Michael Rosholm (The Aarhus School of Business, Denmark)

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the movements of French young people between three states: employment, unemployment and non-participation. The data used in the emprcal study are extracted from the wawes 1990-1992 of French Labour Survey and from a special survey led in 1992 (both carried out by the INSEE) containing rich information about youth characteristcs and their labour market status. We drive the likelihood contribution of left-cencored individuals’ histories in the statistical framework of multistates, multi-spells models using the properties of time-homogenous semi-Markov processes and a very flexible baseline hazord, that is, the piecewise constant. Furthermore, we allow for interdependence between duration variables, generated by onobserved heterogeneity components which are assumed to follow a joint discrete distribution. Estimation have been performed seperately on samples of men and women. The results show that in general the transitions of men and women are determined by different factors. For both population studied, higher aducational attainments are associated with shorter unemployment durations and with longer durations when employed. For women we observe in almost all transitions the relevanve of the age affect., implying that relatively old women are generally penalized on the labor marke. Another important factor is nationality; indeed to be of French nationality is often associated with better outcomes in the labor market. We also show that unobserved individual components are significant from a statistical point of view and likely to influence strongly youth mobility on the labour market.

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Middle East Technical University
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