In view of the ageing populations of Europe, an important current challenge for labour markets is to increase the professional activity of those social groups whose participation in the labour market is insufficient. This work focuses on people unemployed for 12 months or more. The main purpose of this study is designation of those social groups which have the greatest problems with getting out of long-term unemployment, and assessment of the consequences of long-term unemployment, depending on its duration, in the context of the ageing society. We have investigated this problem using the example of Poland, which suffers from particularly low fertility rates. In this study, data from the Labour Force Survey (L.F.S.) for Poland have been used to model the duration of long-term unemployment. In the analysis the accelerated failure time models (A.F.T.) in the Bayesian approach have been used. Our results show, among other things, that difficulties in getting out of long-term unemployment mainly affect women and people who have children or who looked after children directly before the start of their job search. This, in consequence, may deepen the problem of the decrease in labour supply caused by the ageing population.

Drawing on the debates regarding work–family reconciliation in later life, we examine the extent to which the labor market position of grandmothers and nongrandmothers can be explained by their varied family situations. The data for this study comes from the Generations and Gender Survey for Poland and includes 5,999 women aged 45+ years. We use multinominal logistic regression models to explore the link between different family situations and labor market withdrawal into unemployment, sick/disability leave, and retirement. Our results indicate that neither caring for older parents nor living with children has significant effects on women’s labor activity. However, living with a disabled person reduces the chances for women’s employment significantly. In addition, women who have grandchildren have lower chances for being employed as compared with those without grandchildren. We discuss these findings in relation to work–family balance policies and research.

In this paper, the duration of the first job of young people aged 18–30 has been analyzed. The aim of the work is to find the distribution which best describes the investigated phenomenon. Bayesian accelerated failure time models have been used for modelling. The use of the Bayesian approach made it possible to extend past research. More precisely, prior information could be included in the study, which let us compare distributions of model parameters. Moreover, the comparison of explanatory power of competing models based on the Bayesian theory was possible. The duration of the first job for men and women was also compared using the abovementioned methods.

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As a transition country in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland has experienced unprecedented changes in the fertility. Currently, the total fertility rate level is very low, ca. 1.3 children per woman, which is below the replacement level. Many studies have described changes in fertility based on the crosssectional approach. However, the changes of cohort fertility have been described not quite sufficiently. Our paper complements this gap by the assessment of stochastic fertility tables, calculated for five-year generations of women born in the period 1930-1980. The main goal of this study is to analyse changes in the cohort patterns of female fertility in Poland.