This paper analyses the extent to which the 2016 election of Donald Trump—and his failed re-election bid in 2020 – are, as often claimed, linked to lower levels of community engagement in the United States and rising inequality. It suggests an alternative view might be more accurate and that the rise in votes for Trump … Read more
Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US
Deepening our understanding on the ways in which social origins shape our lives
Family background influences our lives in multiple ways: from genes to work-life connections, the role that parents can play in their children’s lives is almost ubiquitous. Yet these relationships are far from deterministic. Institutional contexts shape the strength and manner in which the influences take place. Even the way that genes shape our lives depends … Read more
Policy agenda around social inequalities across the life-course
The policy agenda around social inequality is multifaceted and its relevance only heightened following global crises such as the Great Recession and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic. The Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course: structures and processes (DIAL) research programme was designed with this policy agenda in mind – and it has also responded to … Read more
Is vocational education a safety net? The occupational attainment of upper secondary graduates from vocational and academic tracks in Italy
This article assesses the employment and occupational outcomes of upper secondary education graduates from academic and vocational tracks in Italy. In particular, we formulate and test the hypothesis that – contrary to some common expectations – academic graduates outperform vocational graduates at a stage of occupational maturity, even when considering individuals without a tertiary degree. Moreover, we … Read more
Gender segregation in higher education: an empirical test of seven explanations
Gender segregation in higher education (GSHE) is recognized as a key factor to explain the persistence of gender inequalities in the labor market despite the reversal of gender gap in educational attainment. Women are systematically overrepresented in fields of study, such as social sciences and the humanities, which offer relatively poor labor market prospects; at … Read more
Age at Parents’ Separation and Achievement: Evidence from France Using a Sibling Approach
This paper investigates the link between parental separation and children’s achievement in adulthood. Using a French dataset on “Education-Training-Employment”, I first estimate a random effects model and then examine the differences in age at divorce for children within the same family, to control for divorced family selection. Three outcomes are analysed: number of years of … Read more
Is improving access to university enough? Socio-economic gaps in the earnings of English graduates
Much research and policy attention has been on socio-economic gaps in participation at university, but less attention has been paid to socio-economic gaps in graduates’ earnings. This paper addresses this shortfall using tax and student loan administrative data to investigate the variation in earnings of English graduates by socio-economic background. We find that graduates from … Read more
The role of local labour market conditions and pupil attainment on post-compulsory schooling decisions
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of local labour market conditions and pupil educational attainment as primary determinants of the post-compulsory schooling decision. Design/methodology/approach – Through the specification of a nested logit model, the restrictive independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption inherent in the multinomial logit (MNL) model is … Read more
Wages, experience, and training of women over the life cycle
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
DIAL Policy Brief No. 4 ‘Life-course insights on unemployment: What can policymakers learn from Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course (DIAL) research?’
There are a number of key European policy agendas related to health on which the DIAL research can shed light. This policy brief gives an overview of findings from DIAL projects in this area. Key Findings The education and working lives of adolescents and young people continue to be negatively and disproportionately affected by unemployment … Read more