Comparing the working patterns of older people to those of younger people: static and dynamic empirical analyses in selected economies

Under the trend of ageing population, older people have a greater potential to be part of the future labour force. Their employment patterns therefore deserve governments' attention. This thesis compares the employment patterns of older people to those of younger people in selected economies. In the first study we decompose the age-employment gaps using non-linear Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions in the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong. Explained factors explain nearly the entire age-employment gaps in the U.S. and Hong Kong but not in the U.K. In the second study, we investigate job preferences in addition to employment outcomes. Our binomiallogit models on working part-time involuntarily show that part-time employment is more likely to be a voluntary choice regardless of gender and age in the U.K. In the third study we estimate competing risks Cox proportional hazards models on unemployment and various types of employment spells in the U.K. We find that the older an individual is when he or she starts an unemployment spell, the longer he or she remains unemployed before getting a full-time or part-time job. However, the trend of decreasing hazards from leaving unemployment spells to part-time employment reverses after the spell starting age of 54.