Lost in Transition? Employment and Family Change for Mid-Life Men

Under the provocative title ‘Useless, jobless men – the social blight of our age’?, a May 2010 British newspaper article posed the question as to whether the UK benefits system has produced an ‘emasculated’ generation of men who can find neither work nor a wife. Informed by a review of international literature, we use census, HLFS and benefit data to explore these issues within a New Zealand context. We demonstrate how a group of mid life males on the margins of work and family life have emerged in New Zealand and show how this has been drivenbyanumberofchangesinlabourmarkets,particularlyinrelationtothelowskilled; inmarriagemarkets;andthroughtheworkingsof the benefit system. Although our research suggests that the size of this marginalised group is relatively small, the men we are concerned about are at the heart of a number of difficult contemporary policy issues such as the rise in disability benefit receipt and incarceration. Historically, low skilled males were a major focus of policy ­ the breadwinner model ­ which focussed on reinforcing the social expectation that men’s role was in work and married. We suggest there now needs to be a renewed policy focus on this group. However rather than attempting to return the world to the 1950s, the task for policy makers is to consider how best to create policy settings that are effective for the contemporary structure of work and family life.