Economic inactivity due to sickness, disability and injury in ‘old industrialised’ city-regions of the UK, 2013–2022

This paper provides recent evidence on the spatial importance of economic inactivity – concentrating on sickness, disability and injury (SDI) – separately for males and females. It concentrates on those city-regions with the highest levels of SDI and undertakes statistical analysis to measure the importance of ‘endowment’ (the ‘mix’ of people with characteristics increasing their propensity to being SDI) versus ‘structural’ (i.e., other) effects. It finds that ‘endowment’ effects dominate when explaining sickness and disability, although it is recognised that spatially disadvantaged labour markets (which experienced the brunt of deindustrialisation and similar shocks) historically suffer from both demand- and supply-side reasons for the rise in sickness rates. The policy implications of this finding are briefly discussed.