The Transition from School to Work in the Early 1990s: A comparison of England, Wales and Scotland

This paper compares the transitions of young people who entered the labour market by the age of 18-19 in England, Wales and Scotland in the early 1990s. It uses cohort survey data to compare the dynamics of labour-market entry, destinations at age 18-19 and the factors associated with employment and with occupational level. Comparative theories of transition predict that the processes and outcomes of transition will not differ much between England, Wales and Scotland, and these are broadly supported by our data. We find a number of relatively small variations between the countries, but these do not amount to a clear and theoretically consistent pattern of differences. We find several features that are common to the three systems, many of which appear to represent a distinctively 'British' pattern of transition.