Rich parents have rich children. Why is that? This paper evaluates several different potential channels that might explain the persistence in earnings between parents and children. In particular, the researchers study the relative importance of differences in years of schooling, cognitive skills, parental investments, and family background. To do so, they use a cohort born … Read more
The Intergenerational Elasticity of Earnings: Exploring the Mechanisms
The association of maternal education on children’s language skills and its link to social inequality, descriptive analysis from three European cohort studies
Social inequality is a persistent global issue which many countries, governments, and policymakers aim to address. The development of language and communication skills during the early years of a child’s life are vital for school readiness, educational success, and later life outcomes. As part of a collaborative research project we sought to bring together data … Read more
Workplace Contact and Support for Anti-Immigration Parties
This paper asks whether support for anti-immigration political parties increases or decreases when native-born voters work alongside migrants. It finds that working together significantly reduces opposition to immigration and this leads to lower support for those parties. The researchers used detailed data from three million people in almost 6,000 electoral precincts across Sweden. All of … Read more
Economic Distress and Support for Radical Right Parties—Evidence From Sweden
This paper investigates whether there are any links between being made unemployed and increasing support for radical right-wing political parties. The research uses Swedish election data to show that for every layoff notice among low-skilled native-born workers, support for the country’s radical right party the Sweden Democrats increases by, on average, 0.17 to 0.45 votes. … Read more
The effect of COVID-19-related school closures on students’ well-being: Evidence from Danish nationwide panel data
New research from Denmark suggests that in some respects students’ wellbeing improved during the Spring 2020 lockdown, and that this effect was strongest among students of lower socioeconomic status. The study used data from the Danish Student Wellbeing Study, which is carried out nationwide on an annual basis. It compared responses from students aged 12-15 … Read more
Educational differentiation in secondary education and labour-market outcomes
Countries differ in the way in which they organise their education systems. With this special issue, we want to pay particular attention to the period of secondary education, the different institutional approaches that countries pursue during that phase and the long-term consequences for individual labour-market outcomes that follow from it. Secondary education is probably the … Read more
Facts and Myths in the Popular Debate about Inequality in Sweden
This paper presents a critical assessment of the public debate on income and wealth inequality in Sweden. The authors scrutinize ten often-heard claims in the debate by contrasting them against facts in available databases and results in the research literature. The paper also addresses specific measurement problems in the Swedish income statistics and suggests possible … Read more
Association of Very Preterm Birth or Very Low Birth Weight With Intelligence in Adulthood: An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis
Question Is very preterm birth or very low birth weight vs term birth associated with intelligence in adulthood? Findings In this meta-analys is of individual participant data from 8 cohorts comprising 2135 adults with and without very preterm birth or very low birth weight in 7 countries, IQ was significantly lower among adults who were … Read more
Faith No More? The divergence of political trust between urban and rural Europe
This paper looks the divergence in political trust levels between rural and urban areas since 2008. It concludes that this increasing rural-urban divide has important implications for European democracies. The research uses data gathered between 2008 and 2018 bythe European Social Survey, accounting for a total population of 433 million and allowing a final sample of just over 125,000 people aged over 16 years … Read more
Lives on track? Long‐term earnings returns to selective school placement in England and Denmark
This paper looks how selective schooling affected the lifetime earnings of people born in the 1950s, and finds it did little to improve earnings or to increase social mobility in England. The researchers used data from the National Child Development Study on 15,000 people born in England and Wales in a single week in March … Read more