This research investigates whether the social class of divorced parents has any bearing on the likelihood of their children also getting divorced. Specifically it seeks to establish whether having more advantaged parents makes divorcing less likely thereby weakening the intergenerational transmission of divorce. It finds it does not. The researchers analyse 38,000 life histories from … Read more
The intergenerational transmission of family dissolution – and how it varies by social class origin and birth cohort
The Economics and Econometrics of Gene-Environment Interplay
Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one’s genes) and nurture (one’s environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper explores the potential uses of genetic data in economics, with … Read more
Genetic advantage and equality of opportunity in education: Two definitions, and an empirical application
Research on equality of opportunity has long acknowledged that genetic factors play a role in determining our level of success. But if we want to measure equality of opportunity, should we treat innate advantages as fair or unfair? And how would each of these two different perspectives affect researchers’ outcomes when they try to measure … Read more
The health impacts of universal early childhood interventions: evidence from Sure Start
This research evaluates the short- and medium-term health impacts of Sure Start, a large-scale and universal early childhood programme in England. The programme provided Sure Start Centres across the country which operated as ‘one-stop shops’ for families with children under 5, bringing together a range of support including health services, parenting support programmes, and access … Read more
Formation of Children’s Cognitive and Socio- Emotional Skills: Is All Parental Time Equal?
This paper asks how time spent with one or both parents can affect children’s social, emotional and verbal skills. It finds the effect of doing educational activities with the father is smaller than that of time spent with the mother or with both parents together for children’s verbal and socio-emotional skills. The research uses data … Read more
The Intergenerational Elasticity of Earnings: Exploring the Mechanisms
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 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
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
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
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