This paper looks at the extent to which wages are affected by profits in major British firms – a process known as ‘rent-sharing.’ It finds this happens on a much smaller scale today than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. The researchers used data from a panel of the top 300 publicly-quoted British companies … Read more
Rent Sharing and Inclusive Growth
Between Communism and Capitalism: Long-term Inequality in Poland, 1892-2015
This paper looks at the evolution of inequality in Poland from the late 19th Century to the early 21st Century, by constructing the long-term distribution of income in Poland from combining tax, household survey and national accounts data. It documents a U-shaped evolution of inequalities from the end of the 19th century until today: (i) … Read more
Divorce and Diverging Poverty Rates: A Risk‐and‐Vulnerability Approach
This study offers a new approach to analyzing life course inequalities and applies it to the link between divorce and poverty. Previous research has suggested that divorce drives cumulative inequality between education groups during the life course. Two pathways play a role in this process: the educational gradient in the risk of divorce and the … Read more
Destination as a process: Sibling similarity in early socioeconomic trajectories
This paper finds that when trying to better understand how individuals achieve a social position, it is key to consider not just where they start and finish, but how their lives unfold and change over time. The research makes use of rich Finnish register data to compare the education, work and earnings between the ages … Read more
Family, Firms, and Fertility: A Study of Social Interaction Effects
This research shows that when an individual has a baby can be directly linked to the fertility decisions not only of their closest family and colleagues but of wider networks. The findings demonstrate for the first time and in a robust way, a clear fertility spillover effect from family to the workplace and vice versa. … Read more
Aiming High and Missing the Mark? Educational Choice, Dropout Risk, and Achievement in Upper Secondary Education among Children of Immigrants in Denmark
This paper finds that high aspiration among young people from ethnic minority backgrounds can be a double-edged sword: it helps close the gap between these young people and their native-origin peers, but at the cost of higher drop-out rates. The research looks at the choices made by Danish youngsters at the age of 16, when … Read more
Discrimination in the hiring of older jobseekers: Combining a survey experiment with a natural experiment in Switzerland
This paper looks at different explanations for why older jobseekers may struggle to find a new job if they are out of work, and concludes that this group is at a significant disadvantage when compared to younger workers with similar qualifications. The researchers tested three theories: that employers may prefer to recruit internally; that older … Read more
Family Size and the Persistency of Poverty following Divorce: The United States in Comparative Perspective
This paper assesses how the short- and medium-term economic consequences of divorce on women vary by family size. It finds, surprisingly, that having children contributes to a woman’s economic recovery in the medium term. The researchers made use of household survey data in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and Switzerland and advanced modelling techniques to … Read more
The Complexity of Employment & Family Life Courses across 20th Century Europe: An Update
It is a common perception in public debate that lives have become more unstable over the past decades. The authors put this to a broad empirical test using data from 30 European countries to ask, whether family life and employment have indeed become more unstable over time, or if differences across countries remain greater. The … Read more
Why is there an educational gradient in union dissolution? The strain thesis revisited
This study finds that lower educated couples are more likely to separate than their better educated peers, because they experience strain across multiple aspects of their life, including work, finance, social relationships, health and housing. The research shows that lower educated couples are not in themselves more likely to separate, but rather face a range … Read more