Mary Reader

Visiting Fellow

Email:

m.reader@lse.ac.uk

Connect:

Website

Biography

Mary is a PhD student in Economics at Stanford University.

Latest

CASEpapers

Making Work Pay? The labour market effects of capping child benefits in larger families

01 June 2023

Mary Reader, Kate Andersen, Ruth Patrick, Aaron Reeves and Kitty Stewart

Child benefits are typically paid on a per-child basis, without restrictions on family size. In this paper we generate unique evidence on the effects of capping child benefits by family size by examining the introduction... Read more...

Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes Research Papers

Public and private welfare activity in England, 1979 to 2019 (Revised version June 2024).

04 January 2023

Mary Reader and Tania Burchardt

(REVISED VERSION, published in June 2024) This paper offers an empirical account of the changing landscape of private and public welfare activity in England over the forty years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. It forms a... Read more...

CASE Social Exclusion Seminars

Fertility and the two-child limit: does cutting child benefits really affect fertility?

15 June 2022

Mary Reader (CASE, LSE), Jonathan Portes (King’s College London), Ruth Patrick (University of York), Kate Andersen (University of York)

The two-child limit, introduced by the UK government from April 2017, restricts means-tested child-related social security support to the first two children in a household. It aimed to “to ensure that families in receipt... Read more...

CASEpapers

The birthweight effects of universal child benefits in pregnancy: quasi-experimental evidence from England and Wales

24 February 2021

Mary Reader

Over a decade ago, in April 2009, the UK Labour government introduced the Health in Pregnancy Grant (HPG), a cash transfer of the equivalent of child benefit over the third trimester (£190) as a lump sum to all pregnant ... Read more...

Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes Research Papers

The Conservative Governments' Record on Early Childhood from May 2015 to pre-COVID 2020: Policies, Spending and Outcomes

01 February 2021

Kitty Stewart and Mary Reader

This paper uses the Social Policies and Distributional Outcomes framework to evaluate the record of successive Conservative administrations on early childhood during the period between 2015 and the eve of the COVID-19 pa... Read more...