There are a number of key European policy agendas related to early childhood on which the DIAL research can shed light. This policy brief gives an overview of findings from DIAL projects in this area. Key Findings Early childhood investments are key to social mobility, and inequalities which can be measured in early childhood have … Read more
DIAL Policy Brief No. 7 ‘Investing in early childhood: What can policymakers learn from Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course (DIAL) research?’
DIAL Policy Brief No. 5 ‘Causes and consequences of educational inequalities: 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 education 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 more selective an education system is, and the earlier the age at which selection takes place, the more … Read more
The emergence of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties: Analyzing risk and protective pathways in the United Kingdom and Germany
This study aims to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by getting to grips with certain facets of parenting and child development and how they might influence their child’s behavior. The research makes use of data from the United Kingdom and Germany to examine positive and negative parenting behavior, any distress a parent reports … Read more
Specific parenting behaviors link maternal education to toddlers’ language and social competence
This study seeks to unpack the underlying ways in which a mother’s education is linked with her toddler’s verbal and social skills. Specifically, it investigates whether different ways of parenting play a role in this. The research uses data on around 2500 children and their mothers to test previous research showing in a very broad … Read more
The intergenerational transmission of family dissolution – and how it varies by social class origin and birth cohort
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
Upper secondary tracks and student competencies: A selection or a causal effect? Evidence from the Italian case
This piece of research examines whether Italian students’ choice of educational track has a causal effect on general skills in reading and mathematics. The research, which relies on a population-level longitudinal dataset, looks at the choices students make at age 14 between four tracks: classical and scientific studies, a general humanistic track, technical, and vocational … Read more
Addressing inequalities early in life
The trajectory of a human’s life course is by no means determined at birth. Nevertheless, the circumstances a child is born into and events taking place during the early childhood, or even gestation, shape life-course trajectories. A substantial amount of research in the Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course (DIAL) research programme has examined what … Read more
Dynastic Human Capital, Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility
The transmission of human capital between generations has been much studied, but most research has focused on what parents pass on to their children. This study creates a much fuller picture of these effects by examining data on four generations of extended families in Sweden. It concludes previous research has very much underestimated the influence … Read more
Testing the association between the early parent–child relationship and teacher reported socio-emotional difficulties at 11 years: a quantile mediation analysis
This paper investigates the strength of association behind well documented links between early parenting factors and later adolescent mental health problems. It goes on to consider the role of language skills at school entry in mediating those links. The research makes use of from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to look into the first … Read more
Geographical mobility and children’s non-completion of upper secondary education in Finland and Germany: Do parental resources matter?
It is often assumed that families migrate to improve their economic and social prospects, and that these additional resources can benefit the whole family. However, existing research suggests that many children who have experienced (internal) migration underperform compared to their non-migrating peers in terms of different socioeconomic outcomes. In this article, we study the effects … Read more