This paper finds that children who spend 12 months at home with their mother after being born become adults who are more satisfied with life than those who spend just 5 months at home or in childcare. The study analyses the effects of reforms in the former German Democratic Republic where, in 1976, mothers with … Read more
The baby year parental leave reform in the GDR and its impact on children’s long-term life satisfaction
Workplace Contact and Support for Anti-Immigration Parties
This is an updated version of the working paper (updated 14th June 2021) 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 … Read more
No stratified effect of unemployment on incomes. How the market, state and household compensate for income loss in the UK and Switzerland
This paper looks at the loss of income in the two years after unemployment in the UK and in Switzerland and finds that while lower income groups are more vulnerable to becoming unemployed they are not necessarily more vulnerable to its consequences. The researchers used data on more than 35,000 people who took part in … Read more
Wages, Experience and Training of Women over the Lifecycle
This paper finds that on-the-job training can help mitigate some of the negative career effects of having children, especially for women who left education at the end of high school. The researchers used data from 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey between 1991 and 2008, which contains information on the employment, education, training … Read more
Rent Sharing and Inclusive Growth
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
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
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
Parenthood Wage Gaps across the Life-Course: An Intersectional Comparison by Gender and Race
This paper investigates the wage penalties and premiums for parents and how they play out over their lives depending on how many children they have and their race and gender. The research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) to map parenthood wage gaps for men and women aged 20-45 … Read more