Exposure to Single and Multiple Risks of Youngsters in Their Early Career in Britain: Continuous or Cumulative Disadvantage?

Abstract

A plethora of studies raised concerns about the rising inequality on the labour market since the mid 1980s and especially also during the current crisis. In this paper we examine how low-skilled young men and women of 16 to 35 years of age fare with respect to their income and employment security over their career using panel data for Britain covering the early 1990s to the late 2000s. The main question is whether low-skilled youngsters are able to recover from their lower entry-level of security or that their disadvantage accelerates due to being exposed to adverse events and statuses over the career? A brief review of globalization, insider-outsider, tournament and stratification theories renders some support to the idea of cumulative disadvantage. The novelty of the approach is in studying the longer-term or career effects of exposure to single and multiple life course risks. The single risk results confirm the literature that low-skilled youngsters face continuous disadvantage instead of cumulative disadvantage implying that they recover but that the gap with the high skilled is never closed. The multiple risk models however reveal a mixed picture of cumulative disadvantage with respect to employment security and continuous disadvantage with respect to income security.