Still Attached? Are Social Safety Nets Working? Labor Force Participation in European Regions

Download or read book Still Attached? Are Social Safety Nets Working? Labor Force Participation in European Regions written by Benjamin Hilgenstock and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-07-18 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper examines the evolution and drivers of labor force participation in European regions, focusing on the effects of trade and technology. As in the United States, rural regions within European countries saw more pronounced declines (or smaller increases) in participation than urban regions. Unlike in the United States, however, trade and technology, captured here using novel measures of initial exposures to routinization and offshoring, did not result in detachment from the workforce in European regions. Instead, regions with high initial exposures to routinization and offshoring experienced so-far larger increases in participation, likely driven by an added second worker effect.