Ausma, Yaron I. (2022) The relation between Urbanization and Job Polarization in the European Labour Market between 1998 and 2018. Master thesis.
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Abstract
This paper examines the relation between urbanization and job polarization between 1998 and 2018, considering nine European countries. Job polarization is characterized by a decrease in the share of middle-skill occupations with a simultaneous increase in the share of low- and high-skill occupations over time. The general consensus in literature is that job polarization has been an ongoing process in Europe during the last couple of decades. However, research on job polarization on different levels of urbanization is limited. In this research data of the European Union Labour Force Survey, supplemented with data from Eurostat, was used to l) explore potential job polarization patterns in cities, towns and suburbs and rural areas for a selection of nine European countries, and to ll) analyse whether these differences could be significantly explained by urbanization on a regional level, accounting for several alternative explanatory aspects such as technology and sectoral composition. The exploration of occupational changes in the nine European countries showed distinct patterns of job polarization for all levels of urbanization. Cities and towns and suburbs polarization patterns demonstrated a strong resemblance, experiencing a larger decrease in middle-skill occupations and a larger increase in high-skill occupations compared to rural areas. The addition of alternative explanatory variables to test the significance of urbanization in explaining these occupational changes for different occupational skill levels on a regional scale generated mixed results. Urbanization was roughly able to explain the changes in the low- and middle-skill occupations, but had no clear relation with high-skill occupational changes. The results also revealed that rural regions tend to experience a replacement bias of the middle-skill occupations toward low-skill occupations. Future research could aim to include a greater number of countries as a means to enhance the generalizability to Europe as a whole, to see whether a different approach would result in a clear relation between urbanization and high-skill occupational change, and to improve knowledge of the relation between urbanization and job polarization in general.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Degree programme: | Economic Geography: Regional Competitiveness and Trade (track) |
| Supervisor: | Edzes, A.J.E. and Cnossen, F.D. |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Jul 2022 14:02 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Jul 2022 14:02 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3895 |
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