This paper compares four different ways of researching how family background affects our educational attainment and earnings: looking at intergenerational mobility; looking at how interventions with parents can affect offspring – the ‘intergenerational effects’ approach – looking at what share of inequality is shared by siblings – ‘sibling correlations’ – and looking for factors which … Read more
Intergenerational mobility, intergenerational effects, sibling correlations, and equality of opportunity: A comparison of four approaches
Inequality of socio-emotional skills: a cross-cohort comparison
This paper shows that inequality in a crucial dimension of human capital – socio-emotional skills at age five – increased dramatically between two cohorts of British children born in 1970 and 2000. The authors used data from the British Cohort Study and the Millennium Cohort Study, which followed two cohorts of children born in 1970 … Read more
COVID‐19 and Inequalities
This paper brings together evidence from various data sources and the most recent studies to describe what we know so far about the impacts of the COVID‐19 crisis on inequalities across several key domains of life, including employment and ability to earn, family life and health. We show how these new fissures interact with existing … Read more
The Challenges for Labour Market Policy during the COVID‐19 Pandemic
The COVID‐19 pandemic is having a dramatic economic impact in most countries. In the UK, it has led to sharp falls in labour demand in many sectors of the economy and to initial acute labour shortages in other sectors. Much more than in a typical downturn, the current crisis is not simply a general slowdown … Read more
European Union Extended Working Life Policies: On Pension Systems, Public Finances and Biopolitical Disciplining
This paper takes three key European Union documents on extended working lives (EWL) and looks at them from the perspective that policies are not entirely shaped by problems: in fact, problems are often shaped, in narrative terms, around policies. It concludes that the ‘problem’ which shapes much EU policy on EWL is questionable – the … Read more
Life Course Trajectories and Wealth Accumulation in the United States: Comparing Baby Boomers and Millennials
This paper empirically assesses the widespread belief that Millennials are economically worse off than their parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers. The research used US data from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth to analyse the work and family life courses of Millennials and Baby Boomers from age 18 to 35, and then … Read more
Sources of change in the primary and secondary effects of social class origin on educational decisions: evidence from Denmark, 2002–2016
It is well-known that pupils from poorer backgrounds are more likely than their peers to take vocational rather than academic routes in upper secondary school – but what drives this? Does social class status itself lead to these decisions, or is there a mediating factor at play: that pupils from less well-off homes tend to … Read more
Heterogeneity in unemployment dynamics: (Un)observed drivers of the longitudinal accumulation of risks
We know those in unemployment are at increased risk of being unemployed again, but is this a causal relationship between past and future risks? This paper, based on large-scale data from four European countries, answer to this question disentangling the effect of past unemployment from the effect of other factors which may also be at … Read more
Union dissolution and income inequality among separating women
This study looks at women’s standard of living immediately after divorce or separation. It finds that women who had a higher standard of living tend to lose more from divorce or separation. At the same time, overall income inequality among separated women increases. The researchers compared the household incomes of separated women to a hypothetical … Read more
Heterogeneous unemployment dynamics of ancestral Swedes and second-generation immigrants
This paper uses Swedish registry data for almost 450,000 people born in Sweden between 1977 and 1981 to compare the experience of unemployment over the working careers of second-generation immigrants (children born in Sweden with at least one foreign-born parent) and ancestral Swedes (individuals born in Sweden with two parents born in Sweden). It finds … Read more