Constraint and opportunity: Identifying voluntary nonemployment

Given the emphasis in recent welfare economics, political philosophy andsocial policy on the concept of opportunity, the need to find a way ofdifferentiating between outcomes that are the result of choice and outcomesthat are the results of constraint has become pressing. But all approaches tomeasuring choice and opportunity are confronted by their inherentunobservability: we observe what an individual does, not what he or she coulddo.The application of a new methodology, using data on the activities of ‘similar’individuals, allowing judgements about the extent to which factors areconstraints to vary, and, by incorporating a check for unobserved constraints,shows that the concept of opportunity can be operationalised empirically.The proportion of non-employment (including education, early-retirement andcaring, as well as unemployment) classified as voluntary is highly sensitive tothe extent to which factors are regarded as beyond individual control. On thenarrowest interpretation of constraint, voluntary non-employment accounts fortwice as much as the amount considered as voluntary on the broadestinterpretation.[...]