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During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a steep rise in disability benefit claims in Britain, especially among older male workers, and the debate centred on the relative generosity of these benefits as well as the effects of deindustrialization. Since that time, the disability benefit system has been subject to a series of reforms, all largely aimed at reducing the number of claims and targeting benefits more closely to those with the greatest health need. At the same time, the labour market has also evolved, and until the recent Covid‐19 pandemic, it had a historically low level of unemployment, accompanied by falling real earnings. We use individual longitudinal data from 2010 to 2018 in a dynamic panel framework to explore the relative importance of health status, benefit generosity and local labour market conditions for disability benefit claims in the modern British labour market. We focus particularly on spatial variation in claims, and find that, in line with older evidence, while health status is clearly important, geographic variation in labour market conditions still influences the propensity to claim those disability benefits that are conditional on not working.

We explore the relationship between educational attainment and social interaction using individual level data from the British National Child Development Study. To be specific, we analyze whether an intergenerational aspect to this relationship exists by examining the relationship between the educational attainment of children and the degree of formal social activity undertaken by their parents. Our results suggest that children's scores in reading, mathematics and vocabulary tests are positively associated with the extent of their parents' formal social interaction, and this relationship is robust to alternative definitions of social interaction.

AbstractThis paper employs establishment level data from the annual respondents database to consider technological differences between establishments operating in the UK. We adopt very precise measures of technology, arguably much more detailed than have hitherto been employed to address the key question of whether use of technology differs by nationality. After numerous controls we find that typically North American establishments have a higher probability of being more technologically intensive than their UK counterparts. This result also stands up in panel analysis.

This paper employs establishment level data from the annual respondents database to consider technological differences between establishments operating in the UK. We adopt very precise measures of technology, arguably much more detailed than have hitherto been employed to address the key question of whether use of technology differs by nationality. After numerous controls we find that typically North American establishments have a higher probability of being more technologically intensive than their UK counterparts. This result also stands up in panel analysis.