Publications
CASEpapers
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The bottom line and the top line: insights from poverty measurement for developing an extreme wealth line
There is increasing interest globally in making extreme wealth more visible, governable, and accountable for the harms it generates. One contribution to that agenda would be the development of a social indicator of extre...Read more
Tania Burchardt, Michael Vaughan and Ingrid Robeyns
5 June 2026
Foundations for a harm-based extreme wealth line
In this paper, we lay out the foundations for an extreme wealth line, in both conceptual as well as motivational terms. An extreme wealth line is a social indicator that tries to capture the intuition that a person can h...Read more
Ingrid Robeyns, Michael Vaughan and Tania Burchardt
24 June 2026
Does The Scottish Child Payment Weaken Work Incentives?
The Scottish Child Payment (SCP), introduced in 2021, provides cash transfers for families with children receiving Universal Credit (UC) or related benefits. The eligibility link to UC can create a potential cliff-edge a...Read more
Suzanna Nesom, Kitty Stewart and Emma Tominey
10 December 2025
Investing in Children: Early findings on the difference the Scottish Child Payment makes to child well-being
Recent years have seen a divergence in welfare of Scotland compared to other UK nations. The Scottish Government has used its devolved powers on social security to introduce a package of five Family Payments, the centrep...Read more
Kate Andersen, Suzanna Nesom, Ruth Patrick, Ilona Pinter, Kitty Stewart and Emma Tominey
8 December 2025
A decade on: Walking the sharp edge of the UK?s social security system
The UK's social security landscape and public services infrastructure have been transformed since the Conservatives took office in 2010, initially as part of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The collision of auste...Read more
Amanda Light and Ruth Patrick
25 October 2024
Social Class and Social Mobility Differences in Intergenerational Exchanges of Practical and Financial Support in the UK
How do patterns of intergenerational support vary across social class groups and by upwards or downwards social mobility? Are the patterns observed consistent with reciprocity, altruism, status reproduction or something ...Read more
Eleni Karagiannaki, Tania Burchardt and Xingna Zhang
8 October 2024
Capped and trapped (in the UK's housing market): how the benefit cap makes it almost impossible to find affordable housing
The benefit cap places an upper limit on the total amount a family can receive in financial support from the government in a given year. Many of those subject to the cap live in high rent properties and one stated goal f...Read more
Mark Fransham, Kate Andersen, Ruth Patrick, Aaron Reeves and Kitty Stewart
31 July 2024
An impossible move? Households' experiences of trying to escape the Benefit Cap
Recent governments have increasingly used their power to attempt to alter the behaviour of people in receipt of social security benefits. This can be seen in the case of the Benefit Cap, a policy introduced with a specif...Read more
Ruth Patrick, Kate Andersen, Kitty Stewart, Aaron Reeves and Mark Fransham
31 July 2024
Fair decarbonisation of housing in the UK: A sufficiency approach
This paper addresses a neglected aspect of the UK housing crisis: how to rapidly but fairly decarbonise the housing stock to meet tough net zero targets while meeting housing needs of the entire population. To do so the ...Read more
Ian Gough, Stefan Horn, Charlotte Rogers and Rebecca Tunstall
22 March 2024
Making Work Pay? The labour market effects of capping child benefits in larger families
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
Mary Reader, Kate Andersen, Ruth Patrick, Aaron Reeves and Kitty Stewart
1 June 2023
The sins of the parents: Conceptualising adult-oriented reforms to family policy
A core element of a welfare state is the support that is provided to families with children, in recognition of the additional needs that dependent children create. Variation in the design, generosity and implementation o...Read more
Kitty Stewart, Ruth Patrick and Aaron Reeves
27 April 2023
Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children?s deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC
Evidence from the 2014 EU-SILC indicates that a non-negligible proportion of children in Europe live in multi-family households. Leaving aside more complex household types, around 4% of children live with their grandpare...Read more
Eleni Karagiannaki and Tania Burchardt
22 June 2022
The two-child limit & `choices? over family size: When policy presentation collides with lived experiences
The two-child limit restricts the child element in Universal Credit and Tax Credits to two children in a household (for children born after April 2017). One objective of the two-child limit is to influence the fertility ...Read more
Kate Andersen and Ruth Patrick
15 June 2022
No such thing as a free lunch? Exploring the consistency, validity, and uses of the `Free School Meals? (FSM) measure in the National Pupil Database
This paper examines the existing literature on what the Free School Meals (`FSM?) measure in the National Pupil Database (NPD) can proxy, and on ways in which the measure is used and understood. Through new empirical ana...Read more
Tammy Campbell and Polina Obolenskaya
12 November 2021
A time of need: Exploring the changing poverty risk facing larger families in the UK
Child poverty in the UK has seen rapid change over the last two decades, broadly falling from the late 1990s until 2012/13 and rising since then. As a result, child poverty rates converged with rates of poverty for worki...Read more
Kitty Stewart, Aaron Reeves and Ruth Patrick
28 July 2021
Did the introduction of the benefit cap in Britain harm mental health? A natural experiment approach
In November 2016, the UK government announced they would be lowering the benefit cap, the total amount a family with no-one in full-time employment can receive from the government in social security. This policy change r...Read more
Aaron Reeves, Mark Fransham, Kitty Stewart and Ruth Patrick
26 November 2020
The financial resilience of households: 22 country study with new estimates, breakdowns by household characteristics and a review of policy options
Some households are less resilient to financial shocks than others. This may be because they have low levels of savings, have limited access to affordable credit, already hold high levels of debt or lack the skills requi...Read more
Abigail McKnight and Mark Rucci
4 May 2020
Intra-household inequality and adult material deprivation in Europe
In most research on living standards, material deprivation is measured using household-level material deprivation indicators. However, if resources are not shared equally within households, conventional material deprivat...Read more
Eleni Karagiannaki and Tania Burchardt
2 March 2020
Understanding the relationship between inequalities and poverty: a review of dynamic mechanisms
In this paper we examine the evidence on how dynamic mechanisms, which include earnings and income mobility, poverty dynamics, social mobility and the accumulation of risk and advantage over the lifecycle, may be a contr...Read more
Magali Duque and Abigail McKnight
30 October 2019
Understanding the relationship between inequalities and poverty: mechanisms associated with crime, the legal system and punitive sanctions
This paper outlines the various issues pertaining to how crime, the legal system and punitive sanctions may provide a mechanism through which inequality is positively related to poverty. We analyse trends in crime rates...Read more
Magali Duque and Abigail McKnight
3 July 2019
Inequalities in the experience of early education in England: Access, peer groups and transitions
This paper summarises the output of a Nuffield-funded research project exploring inequalities in three aspects of children?s experience in early education in England. The main focus of the project was on `peer effects? i...Read more
Tammy Campbell, Ludovica Gambaro and Kitty Stewart
7 June 2019
Reducing Mommy Penalties with Daddy Quotas
This paper investigates whether daddy quotas - non-transferable paternity leave policies - mitigate motherhood penalties women face in the labor market. Using the introduction of a daddy quota in Quebec, Canada as a natu...Read more
Allison Dunatchik and Berkay Ozcan
22 May 2019
Non-resident parents: Why are they hard to capture in surveys and what can we do about it?
The under-representation of non-resident parents in surveys has long hindered research on family separation, leaving key evidence gaps for those making policy and practice decisions related to separating and separated fa...Read more
Caroline Bryson and Stephen McKay
25 October 2018
Does Part-Time Mothering Help Get a Job? The Role of Shared Custody in Women?s Employment
Though shared custody arrangements after divorce are more and more frequent in many countries, little is known about their economic consequences for parents. By relaxing family time constraints, does shared custody help ...Read more
Carole Bonnet, Bertrand Garbinti and Anne Solaz
25 April 2018
Experience of multiple disadvantage among Roma, Gypsy and Traveller children in England and Wales
Roma, Gypsy and Traveller children across Europe experience high levels of disadvantage and have repeatedly been identified as a priority in European Commission policy documents, yet they are often missing or invisible i...Read more
Tania Burchardt, Polina Obolenskaya, Polly Vizard and Mario Battaglini
1 March 2018
Multidimensional poverty and income inequality in the EU
This paper examines the link between the way a country's most deprived individuals experience disadvantage across multiple dimensions of life and how this may relate to its level of income inequality. By expanding the de...Read more
Lin Yang and Polly Vizard
21 November 2017
Does Money Affect Children's Outcomes? An update
This report provides an update to Does Money Affect Children?s Outcomes?: A Systematic Review, published in October 2013. Using systematic search approaches, we review the literature examining the relationship between ho...Read more
Kerris Cooper and Kitty Stewart
12 July 2017
Inequality and the Capability Approach
Inequality has acquired a newfound prominence in academic and political debate. While scholars working with the capability approach have succeeded in influencing the nature of debate about the conceptualisation and measu...Read more
Tania Burchardt and Rod Hick
13 January 2017
Citizen's Income: Rights and Wrongs
A Citizen?s Income, or a Basic Income, is not a new idea but it has been receiving increasing attention. There is confusion about the idea and an attempt is made to distinguish different concepts. Then a full Citizen?s I...Read more
David Piachaud
1 December 2016
Benefit `myths'? The accuracy and inaccuracy of public beliefs about the benefits system
There is a widespread assumption that increasingly negative public attitudes to the benefits system are due to `myths? held by the British public. However, there is little prior research on whether the public believe the...Read more
Ben Baumberg Geiger
17 October 2016
Pareto and the upper tail of the income distribution in the UK: 1799 to the present
The Pareto distribution has long been a source of fascination to economists, and the Pareto coefficient is widely used, in theoretical and empirical studies, as a summary of the degree of concentration of top incomes. Th...Read more
Anthony B. Atkinson
17 October 2016
How do experts think child poverty should be measured in the UK? An analysis of the Coalition Government?s consultation on child poverty measurement 2012-13
This paper examines responses to a 2012-13 government consultation on child poverty measurement. It explores what these responses tell us about attitudes towards the child poverty indicators in the Child Poverty Act 2010...Read more
Kitty Stewart and Nick Roberts
14 July 2016
Income Poverty, Affluence and Polarisation Viewed From The Median
The present paper brings together different features of the distribution of income ? poverty, affluence and dispersion ? in a single framework that allows ready comparisons across countries. We believe that such a unifie...Read more
Rolf Aaberge, Anthony B. Atkinson and Henrik Sigstad
12 July 2016
Public and Private Welfare Activity in England
This paper is the latest in a series of publications documenting the shifting boundaries of private and public welfare activity for the years 1979/80, 1995/96, 1999/00 and 2007/08, and now 2013/14. It records who finance...Read more
Polina Obolenskaya and Tania Burchardt
8 July 2016
The changing distribution of individual incomes in the UK before and after the recession
While there has been substantial research on the impacts of the Great Recession on household incomes, there has been less attention paid to the effects on individual income. Using pooled data from the Family Resources Su...Read more
Eleni Karagiannaki and Lucinda Platt
30 September 2015
Mothers, parenting and the impact of separation
This paper investigates the impact of separation on mothers? perception of their competence as parents. Using the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a largescale nationally representative cohort study of children born in the...Read more
Lucinda Platt, Tina Haux and Rachel Rosenberg
12 June 2015
Parenting and post-separation contact: what are the links?
High rates of parental separation and the extent to which non-resident fathers lose contact with their child have led to concerns about the involvement of fathers in their children?s lives. In this paper, we draw on a na...Read more
Tina Haux, Lucinda Platt and Rachel Rosenberg
12 June 2015
Monitoring the evolution of income poverty and real incomes over time
This paper brings together two approaches to the monitoring of household living standards: the macro-economic (national accounts) analysis of aggregates and the social indicators based on household microdata (European Un...Read more
Anthony B. Atkinson, Anne-Catherine Guio and Eric Marlier
31 March 2015
The income distribution in the UK: A picture of advantage and disadvantage
This paper describes the UK income distribution and how it has evolved over the last 50 years. It also includes some comparisons with the income distributions of other rich countries. Multiple perspectives on the distrib...Read more
Stephen P Jenkins
18 February 2015
Piketty in the long run
I examine the idea of 'the long run' in Piketty (2014) and related works. In contrast to simplistic interpretations of long-run models of income- and wealth-distribution Piketty (2014) draws on a rich economic analysis t...Read more
Frank A Cowell
17 February 2015
Richard Titmuss: Forty years on
Richard Titmuss was one of the world?s leading public analysts and philosophers. He was highly influential in shaping the post-war welfare state and created the subject we now call social policy. What would he make of th...Read more
Howard Glennerster
18 February 2014
Education and Intergenerational Mobility: Help or Hindrance?
Evidence on intergenerational income mobility in the UK is dated. This paper seeks to update our knowledge by introducing new estimates of mobility for later measures of earnings in the 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts. Given...Read more
Jo Blanden and Lindsey Macmillan
29 January 2014
Wealth and Inheritance in Britain from 1896 to the Present
There has been a large rise in the UK ratio of personal wealth to national income. Personal wealth has grown since the 1970s about twice as fast in real terms as national income. Has this rise in the wealth-income ratio ...Read more
Anthony B. Atkinson
12 November 2013
Labour's Record on Neighbourhood Renewal in England: Policy, Spending and Outcomes 1997-2010
When he came to power in 1997, Tony Blair reacted to widening disparities between poorer and richer neighbourhoods by declaring that no one in future decades should be seriously disadvantaged by where they lived. This pa...Read more
Ruth Lupton, Alex Fenton and Amanda Fitzgerald
12 November 2013
Public policy and inequalities of choice and autonomy
This article explores the conceptualisation of choice as autonomy using three components ? self-reflection, active decision-making, and quality and range of options - and investigates empirical inequalities in autonomy, ...Read more
Tania Burchardt, Martin Evans and Holly Holder
24 June 2013
How best to measure pension adequacy
Though the main benchmark used to assess pension reforms continues to be the expected resulting fall in future government spending, the impact of policy changes on pension adequacy is increasingly coming to the fore. As ...Read more
Aaron George Grech
1 April 2013
A question of quality: Do children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower quality early years education and care in England?
This paper examines how the quality of formal early childhood education and care is associated with children?s background. By using different indicators of quality, the research also explored how the relationship varies ...Read more
Ludovica Gambaro, Kitty Stewart and Jane Waldfogel
1 March 2013
What Gives? Household Consumption Patterns and the 'Big Trade Off' with Public Consumption
At the centre of politics in Britain and other countries is what is sometimes called 'the big trade-off'- where to strike the balance between private consumption and collective goods and social spending ? and hence the s...Read more
Francesca Bastagli and John Hills
1 March 2013
The relationship between EU indicators of persistent and current poverty
The current poverty rate and the persistent poverty rate are both included in the EU?s portfolio of primary indicators of social inclusion. We show that there is a near-linear relationship between these two indicators ac...Read more
Stephen P Jenkins and Philippe Van Kerm
1 March 2013
Accounting for cross-country differences in wealth inequality
This paper adopts a counterfactual decomposition analysis to analyse cross-country differences in the size of household wealth and levels of household wealth inequality. The findings of the paper suggest that the biggest...Read more
Frank A Cowell, Eleni Karagiannaki and Abigail McKnight
1 March 2013
Wealth accumulation in Great Britain 1995-2005: The role of house prices and the life cycle
This paper examines trends in the distribution of household wealth in Great Britain from 1995 to 2005 using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). The data show that wealth is very unevenly distributed and reveal a w...Read more
Francesca Bastagli and John Hills
1 December 2012
Mapping and measuring the distribution of household wealth: A cross-country analysis
In this paper we compare the level, composition and distribution of household wealth in five industrial countries: the UK, US, Italy, Finland and Sweden. We exploit the harmonized data within the Luxembourg Wealth Study,...Read more
Frank A Cowell, Eleni Karagiannaki and Abigail McKnight
1 November 2012
Migrants, Landlords and their Uneven Experiences of the Beijing Olympic Games
Hosting of mega-events such as the Olympic Games tends to be accompanied by voluminous media coverage on the negative social impact of the Games, and the people in the affected areas are often considered to be one victim...Read more
Hyun Bang Shin and Bingqin Li
1 July 2012
Using play to help families learn: Evaluation of Trafford Hall?s Playing 2 Learn Programme 2008-11
The report describes the results of a three-year evaluation by LSE Housing and Communities of a family learning programme called Playing 2 Learn. The Playing 2 Learn programme was open to vulnerable families from low inc...Read more
Laura Lane and Liz Richardson
1 August 2012
Localisation and the means test: A case study of support for English students from Autumn 2012
The combination of spending cuts, efforts to protect the poorest from some of their effects, and `localised? decision-making are leading to an increase in the numbers of means tests designed by lower level institutions. ...Read more
John Hills and Ben Richards
1 May 2012
The Impact of School Context: What headteachers say
This paper reports the accounts of fifteen headteachers of primary schools in one local authority in the South East of England, including headteachers of schools that are amongst the most advantaged five per cent of scho...Read more
Martin Thrupp and Ruth Lupton
1 December 2011
Pathways and penalties: Mothers? employment trajectories and wage growth in the Families and Children Study
This paper uses panel data from the British Families and Children Study to analyse the employment patterns of women with children and the ways in which part-time work and interruptions in paid employment influence the wa...Read more
Francesca Bastagli and Kitty Stewart
1 December 2011
Towards the `Big Society?: What role for neighbourhood working? Evidence from a comparative European study
Under the New Labour government, the neighbourhood emerged prominently as a site for policy interventions and as a space for civic activity, resulting in the widespread establishment of neighbourhood-level structures for...Read more
Catherine Durose, Jonathan France, Liz Richardson and Ruth Lupton
1 October 2011
The distribution of total greenhouse gas emissions by households in the UK, and some implications for social policy
This paper maps the distribution of total direct and embodied emissions of greenhouse gases by households in the UK and goes on to analyse their main drivers. Previous research has studied the distribution of direct emis...Read more
Ian Gough, Saamah Abdallah, Victoria Johnson, Josh Ryan-Collins and Cindy Smith
1 July 2011
Fiscal costs of climate mitigation programmes in the UK: A challenge for social policy?
This paper asks whether the policies and programmes enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the UK will compete with other goals of public policy, in particular social policy goals. The Climate Change Act 2008 has ...Read more
Samuel Marden and Ian Gough
June 2011
Growing Up in Social Housing in the New Millennium: Housing, Neighbourhoods, and Early Outcomes for Children Born in 2000
This study draws on the Millennium Cohort Study to explore the housing and neighbourhood circumstances of children born in England in 2000 at the age of 5 in 2006. The majority of children experienced good housing condit...Read more
Rebecca Tunstall, Ruth Lupton, Dylan Kneale and Andrew Jenkins
February 2011
Are there neighbourhood effects on teenage parenthood in the UK, and does it matter for policy? A review of theory and evidence
This paper is a forerunner to an empirical study of neighbourhood effects on teenage parenthood using the British Cohort Study (BCS70). It reviews evidence for the existence of such effects within the quantitative 'neigh...Read more
Ruth Lupton and Dylan Kneale
September 2010
Assessing the sustainability of pension reforms in Europe
Spurred by the ageing transition, many governments have made wide-ranging reforms, dramatically changing Europe's pensions landscape. Nevertheless there remain concerns about future costs, while unease about adequacy is ...Read more
Aaron George Grech
September 2010
Women?s family histories and incomes in later life in the UK, US and West Germany
Using data from several large scale longitudinal surveys, this paper investigates the relationship between older women?s families histories and their personal incomes in later life in the UK, US and West Germany, By comp...Read more
Maria Evandrou, Jane Falkingham and Tom Sefton
June 2009
The relationship between women?s work histories and incomes in later life in the UK, US and West Germany
Using data from several large scale longitudinal surveys, this paper investigates the relationship between older women?s personal incomes and their work histories in the UK, US and West Germany. By comparing three countr...Read more
Tom Sefton, Jane Falkingham and Maria Evandrou
June 2009
Family ties: Women?s work and family histories and their association with incomes in later life in the UK
This paper examines the relationship between the family and work histories of older women in the UK and their individual incomes in later life, using retrospective data from the first fifteen waves of the British Househo...Read more
Tom Sefton, Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham
December 2008
The Impact of Policy Change on Job Retention and Advancement
This paper examines the impact of the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) on employment retention and advancement. The WFTC, which replaced Family Credit in October 1999, supplemented earnings of low paid workers living i...Read more
Richard Dickens and Abigail McKnight
October 2008
Assimilation of Migrants into the British Labour Market
This paper discusses the extent to which migrants to Britain have been assimilated into the workforce. Migration into Britain has increased over the last 25 years, with a big increase in inflows in recent years. The pape...Read more
Richard Dickens and Abigail McKnight
October 2008
Changes in earnings inequality and mobility in Great Britain 1978/9-2005/6
This paper examines changes in earnings inequality and mobility between 1978/9 and 2005/6 using a unique dataset that includes both those with secure patterns of employment and a wider group who experience periods withou...Read more
Richard Dickens and Abigail McKnight
October 2008
Understanding the relationship between parental income and multiple child outcomes: A decomposition analysis
In this paper we explore the association between family income and children?s cognitive ability (IQ and school performance), socio-emotional outcomes (self esteem, locus of control and behavioural problems) and physical ...Read more
Paul Gregg, Carol Propper and Elizabeth Washbrook
December 2007
Are current levels of air pollution in England too high? The impact of pollution on population mortality
We examine the relationship between common sources of airborne pollution and population mortality in present day England. The current air quality limit values are low by both historical and international standards, and t...Read more
Katharina Janke, Carol Propper and J. Vernon Henderson
December 2007
Socio-Economic Status and Child Behaviour: Evidence from a contemporary UK cohort
This paper examines whether and how socio-economic status is associated with children?s behavioural development in today?s children. Using a large cohort of English children born in the early 1990s we find significant so...Read more
Carol Propper and John A. Rigg
July 2007
Refinancing Europe?s Higher Education through Deferred and Income-Contingent Fees: An empirical assessment using Belgian, German and UK data
The arguments for refinancing the European Union?s (EU) higher education via higher tuition fees largely rest on preserving the profitability of the educational investment and offering deferred and income-contingent paym...Read more
Vincent Vandenberghe and O Debande
June 2007
Developing a capability list: Final Recommendations of the Equalities Review Steering Group on Measurement
In October 2007, a unified Commission on Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) will begin operation in Britain. The Commission will have responsibility for monitoring and promoting human rights and equality on the grounds of ...Read more
Polly Vizard and Tania Burchardt
April 2007
Definition of equality and framework for measurement: Final Recommendations of the Equalities Review Steering Group on Measurement
In October 2007, a unified Commission on Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) will begin operation in Britain. The Commission will have responsibility for monitoring and promoting human rights and equality on the grounds of ...Read more
Tania Burchardt and Polly Vizard
April 2007
Understanding low achievement in English schools
Tens of thousands of young people leave school with no or very few qualifications in England. This paper seeks to build a fuller picture of Key Stage 4 low achievement and its correlates than available hitherto. We focus...Read more
Geeta Gandhi Kingdon and Robert Cassen
June 2007
Pension Policy in EU25 and its Possible Impact on Elderly Poverty
This paper reviews changes in pension policies in EU countries between 1995 and 2005 and describes how they might affect risk of poverty for future pensioner populations. The pension landscape in Europe has changed consi...Read more
Asghar Zaidi, Aaron George Grech and Michael Fuchs
December 2006
Work-Life Balance in a Low-Income Neighbourhood
`Work-life balance? generally refers to how people may combine paid employment with family responsibilities. The UK government?s attempts to promote work-life balance are connected to wider concerns to maximise labour-fo...Read more
Hartley Dean and Alice Coulter
November 2006
The Social Protection of Rural Workers in the Construction Industry in Urban China
The construction industry is important for Chinese rural to urban migrants. Over 90% of urban construction workers are rural migrants, and over a third of all rural migrants work in construction. The construction industr...Read more
Bingqin Li and Huamin Peng
November 2006
Transition from Work to Retirement in EU25
The policy agenda of extending working lives requires a holistic understanding of factors underlying the decision of older workers to withdraw from work and to retire. This brief paper presents employment patterns and tr...Read more
Asghar Zaidi, Mattia Makovec and Michael Fuchs
October 2006
Understanding socio-economic inequalities in childhood respiratory health
Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood. Recent evidence has shown a socio-economic gradient in its distribution. This paper examines whether a number of factors argued to have led to a rise in the inciden...Read more
Carol Propper and John A. Rigg
March 2006
Modelling poverty by not modelling poverty: An application of a simultaneous hazards approach to the UK
We pursue an economic approach to analysing poverty. This requires a focus on the variables that individuals can influence, such as forming or dissolving a union or having children. We argue that this indirect approach t...Read more
Arnstein Aassve, Simon Burgess, Matt Dickson and Carol Propper
January 2006
The Dynamics of School Attainment of England's Ethnic Minorities
We exploit a universe dataset of state school students in England with linked test score records to document the evolution of attainment through school for different ethnic groups. The analysis yields a number of strikin...Read more
Deborah Wilson, Simon Burgess and Adam Briggs
January 2006
Health Supplier Quality and the Distribution of Child Health
There is emerging evidence to suggest that initial differentials between the health of poor and more affluent children in the UK do not widen over early childhood. One reason may be that through the universal public fund...Read more
Carol Propper, John A. Rigg and Simon Burgess
June 2005
Parallel lives? Ethnic segregation in schools and neighbourhoods
We provide evidence on the extent of ethnic segregation experienced by children across secondary schools and neighbourhoods (wards). Using 2001 Schools Census and Population Census data we employ the indices of dissimila...Read more
Simon Burgess, Deborah Wilson and Ruth Lupton
June 2005
Expenditure Patterns Post-Welfare Reform in the UK: Are low-income families starting to catch up?
In this paper we provide evidence on how the UK government?s welfare reforms since 1998 have affected the material well-being of children in low-income families. We examine changes in expenditure patterns and ownership o...Read more
Paul Gregg, Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook
May 2005
An exploration of childhood antecedents of female adult malaise in two British birth cohorts: Combining Bayesian model averaging and recursive partitioning
We use information from two prospective British birth cohort studies to explore the antecedents of adult malaise, an indicator of incipient depression. These studies include a wealth of information on childhood circumsta...Read more
John Hobcraft and Wendy Sigle-Rushton
March 2005
Income Mobility in Old Age in Britain and Germany
The increases in human longevity in recent decades and the trends for early retirement have posed new challenges for policy makers, and require a holistic understanding of the processes that influence the economic resour...Read more
Asghar Zaidi, Joachim R. Frick and Felix Buchel
December 2004
Poverty and Inequality and Social Policy in China
Despite prolonged economic growth, poverty has become a more notable and noted feature of Chinese society. The paper examines three phases of development since the foundation of the People?s Republic: the central plannin...Read more
Bingqin Li and David Piachaud
November 2004
The Impact of Low Income on Child Health: Evidence from a Birth Cohort Study
There is a growing literature that shows that higher family income is associated with better health for children. Wealthier parents may have more advantaged children because they have more income to buy health care or be...Read more
Simon Burgess, Carol Propper and John A. Rigg
May 2004
Employment, Family Union, and Childbearing Decisions in Great Britain
The paper investigates the relationship between work and family life in Britain. Using appropriate statistical techniques we estimate a five-equation model, which includes birth events, union formation, union dissolution...Read more
Arnstein Aassve, Simon Burgess, Carol Propper and Matt Dickson
April 2004
Income Dynamics and the Life Cycle
This paper argues that our understanding of income and poverty dynamics benefits from taking a life cycle perspective. A person?s age and family circumstances ? the factors that shape their life cycle ? affect the likeli...Read more
John A. Rigg and Tom Sefton
February 2004
The Economic Basis of Social Class
In this paper we adopt a theory of class positions based on employment relations to assess what implications individuals? class positions have for their economic life. In particular we consider economic security (the ris...Read more
John H Goldthorpe and Abigail McKnight
February 2004
Ethnic Segretation in England's Schools
We document ethnic segregation in secondary schools in England in 2001 in order to contribute to the debate on the degree of ethnic group social integration. We use indices of dissimilarity and isolation to compare the p...Read more
Simon Burgess and Deborah Wilson
February 2004
Disability and Disadvantage: Selection, onset and duration effects
This paper analyses the economic disadvantage experienced by disabled persons of working-age using data from the British Household Panel Survey. We argue that there are three sources of disadvantage among disabled person...Read more
Stephen P Jenkins and John A. Rigg
November 2003
Identifying Vulnerable Groups in the Kyrgyz Labour Market: Some Implications for the National Poverty Reduction Strategy
This paper investigates the overlap between employment status and poverty, drawing particular attention to the working poor and precarious workers, and to the existence of multiple labor-related risks faced by specific g...Read more
Sabine Bernabe and Alexandre Kolev
June 2003
Is Targeting Deprived Areas an Effective Means to Reach Poor People? An assessment of one rationale for area-based funding programmes
Area-based programmes have long been a feature of urban policy in the UK. One rationale is that they are an effective means to target poor people. Area deprivation indices are used to identify areas for targeting. This p...Read more
Rebecca Tunstall and Ruth Lupton
June 2003
Comparing incomes when needs differ: Equivalisation for the extra costs of disability in the UK
Equivalisation of incomes for household size and composition is accepted practice when measuring poverty and inequality; adjustments to take account of other variations in needs are rarely made. This paper explores the f...Read more
Asghar Zaidi and Tania Burchardt
February 2003
Changing Poverty Post-1997
The paper analyses changes in poverty in Britain since 1997. A poverty level of 60 percent of median equivalised income is used. The first part examines the changes that occurred between 1996/7 and 2000/1 as shown by the...Read more
David Piachaud and Holly Sutherland
December 2002
The Economic Determinants of Truancy
Truancy is often seen as irrational behaviour on the part of school age youth. This paper takes the opposite view and models truancy as the solution to a time allocation problem in which youths derive current returns fro...Read more
Simon Burgess, Karen Gardiner and Carol Propper
September 2002
Outsider and Insider Expertise: The response of residents of deprived neighbourhoods to an academic definition of social exclusion
The aim of this paper is to compare academic interpretations of the term social exclusion with the understanding of people with direct experience of the phenomenon. A pre-selected group of residents of deprived neighbour...Read more
Liz Richardson and Julian Le Grand
April 2002
Constraint and Opportunity: Identifying Voluntary Non-Employment
This paper assesses the extent to which the behaviour of an individual is the result of the constraints that he or she faces, or the result of his or her preferences. It concentrates on participation or non-participation...Read more
Tania Burchardt and Julian Le Grand
April 2002
Sheer Class? The Extent and Sources of Variation in the UK Graduate Earnings Premium
In this paper, we use the individual-level USR data for the whole population of 1993 leavers from the ?old? universities of the UK to investigate the determinants of graduate occupational earnings. Among other results, w...Read more
Robin A. Naylor, Jeremy Smith and Abigail McKnight
March 2002
Expanding the Domain of Policy-Relevant Scholarship in the Social Sciences
In this paper the author argues that social scientists need to do more to provide policy-relevant research. Rapid technological and economic change raise new issues about how policy should adjust that are not adequately ...Read more
William Julius Wilson
February 2002
United Kingdom Education 1997-2001
This paper reviews the achievements of the Labour Government's education policy between 1997 and 2001. Tony Blair claimed that his Government would make education a priority. The first part of the paper reviews the scale...Read more
Howard Glennerster
November 2001
Growing Up: School, family and area influences on adolescents' later life chances
This paper explores the links between school, family and area background influences during adolescence and later adult economic outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on data covering the period 1979 to 1996, drawn fr...Read more
Simon Burgess, Karen Gardiner and Carol Propper
September 2001
Welfare Reform and Lone Mothers' Employment in the US
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 represents a dramatic change in the US welfare state. One of its key goals was to move lone mothers, even those with young children, fr...Read more
Jane Waldfogel, Sandra K. Danziger, Sheldon Danziger and Kristin Seefeldt
June 2001
Why rising tides don't lift all boats? An explanation of the relationship between poverty and unemployment in Britain
Abstract: This paper is motivated by the lack of any obvious relationship between aggregate poverty and unemployment in Great Britain. We derive a framework based on individuals' risks of unemployment and poverty, and ho...Read more
Simon Burgess, Karen Gardiner and Carol Propper
February 2001
Measuring Income Risk
We provide a critique of the methods that have been used to derive measures of income risk and draw attention to the importance of demographic factors as a source of income risk. We also propose new measures of the contr...Read more
Simon Burgess, Karen Gardiner, Stephen P Jenkins and Carol Propper
June 2000
How Effective is the British Government's Attempt to Reduce Child Poverty?
The new Labour Government in Britain has made the reduction of child poverty one of its central objectives. This paper describes the specific initiatives involved in Labour's approach and weighs them up in terms of their...Read more
David Piachaud and Holly Sutherland
March 2000
The Dynamics of Being Disabled
Government policies on disability - and criticism of them - rest in part on an understanding of the circumstances of disabled people informed by cross-sectional survey data, dividing the population into 'the disabled' an...Read more
Tania Burchardt
February 2000
Social Exclusion and the Future of Cities
In both Britain and the United States, people have been moving away from the inner cities to suburban developments, often leaving behind concentrations of poverty and decaying neighbourhoods. Anne Power's paper focuses o...Read more
Anne Power and William Julius Wilson
February 2000
Investing in Children: What do we know? What should we do?
In 1998, a conference brought together US psychologists, economists, sociologists, demographers, political scientists, social workers, and medical doctors, to review what we know about the processes that affect child dev...Read more
Sheldon Danziger and Jane Waldfogel
February 2000
The Class of '81: The effects of early-career unemployment on subsequent unemployment experiences
We examine whether unemployment early in an individual's career influences her later employment prospects. We use six years of the LFS to create pseudo-cohorts and exploit cross-cohort variation in unemployment at school...Read more
Simon Burgess, Carol Propper, Hedley Rees and Arran Shearer
December 1999
Neighbourhood Management
The way we run urban neighbourhoods in Britain is a key to reversing social exclusion, crime and poor performance on almost every front in our cities. This study for the Social Exclusion Unit of seven models of neighbour...Read more
Anne Power and Emmet Bergin
December 1999
The Family Gap in Pay: Evidence from Seven Industrialised Countries
In this paper we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialised countries to investigate the family gap in pay - the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without c...Read more
Susan Harkness and Jane Waldfogel
December 1999
Childhood Poverty, Early Motherhood and Adult Social Exclusion
Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the political agenda. The key new issue addressed in this research is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes...Read more
John Hobcraft and Kathleen E Kiernan
July 1999
Partnership in Pensions? Responses to the Pensions Green Paper
The government's pensions Green Paper 'a new contract for welfare: partnership in pensions' proposes fundamental changes to the UK's retirement income system. Members of CASE and the Department of Social Policy at LSE ha...Read more
Phil Agulnik, Nicholas Barr, Jane Falkingham and Katherine Rake
April 1999
Tightropes and Tripwires: New Labour's Proposals and Means-testing in Old Age
This paper analyses the Government's proposals contained in A New Contract for Welfare: Partnership in Pensions. It examines the position of low paid workers and the potential of the proposals to protect individuals from...Read more
Katherine Rake, Jane Falkingham and Martin Evans
April 1999
Poverty, Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood: Studying the area bases of social exclusion
Are-based policies have become a significant part of the new Labour Government's approach to tackling social exclusion. This paper reviews the long-running debate about whether area-based policies can make a significant ...Read more
Howard Glennerster, Ruth Lupton, Philip Noden and Anne Power
March 1999
When Work Disappears: New Implications for Race and Urban Poverty in the Global Economy
This paper discusses the impact of growing joblessness and dwindling work opportunities on inner-city areas in America. The lack of low-skilled manual work in the inner city is linked to poverty, crime, family dissolutio...Read more
William Julius Wilson
November 1998
Measuring Income Mobility with Dirty Data (published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(3), May 1999)
We examine the performance of measures of mobility when allowance is made for the possibility of data contamination. We find that 'single-stage' indices - those that are applied directly to a sample from a multivariate i...Read more
Frank A Cowell and Christian Schluter
November 1998
Fathers under Fire: The Revolution in Child Support Enforcement in the USA (This CASEpaper is a summary of the book by the same title and authors, published by the Russel Sage Foundation, 1998)
In the shadow of rising divorce and non-marital birth rates, nearly two-thirds of all American children today will live apart from at least one of their parents, usually the father. Clearly this astonishing proportion of...Read more
Irwin Garfinkel, Sara Mclanahan, Daniel Meyer and Judith Seltzer
August 1998
An Economic Model of Household Income Dynamics, with an Application to Poverty Dynamics among American Women
The rise in inequality and poverty is one of the most important economic and social issues in recent times. But in contrast to the literature on individual earnings inequality, there has been little work modelling (as op...Read more
Simon Burgess and Carol Propper
July 1998
The Divorced and Who Divorces? (published as ch.16 in 'Changing Britain: Families and Households in the 1990s', S McRae (ed), OUP, 1999)
The Family Resources Survey was used to identify the characteristics of the divorced population and two longitudinal studies, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the National Child Development Study (NCDS) were...Read more
Kathleen E Kiernan and Ganka Mueller
May 1998
Early Health Related Behaviours and their Impact on Later Life Chances: Evidence from the US (OUT (publ. in Health Economics, 7(5), 1998)
This paper uses evidence from the US to examine the impact of adolescent illegal consumption and violent behaviour on later life chances. Specifically, we look at the effect of such behaviour by young men in late adolsce...Read more
Simon Burgess and Carol Propper
February 1998
Tax Relief and Partnership Pensions (A version of this paper has now been published in the journal Fiscal Studies, vol.19 No.4 ,1998)
Government support of private (occupational and personal) pensions through the system of tax reliefs is large: between one quarter and one third of that of direct support of state pensions through public expenditure. How...Read more
Julian Le Grand and Phil Agulnik
February 1998
Exclusion, Employment and Opportunity
The relationships between employment, education, opportunity, social exclusion and poverty are central to current policy debates. Atkinson argues that the concepts of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion are closel...Read more
Anthony B. Atkinson and John Hills
January 1998
Maternity Leave Policies and Women's Employment after Childbirth: Evidence from the United States, Britain and Japan
This paper uses microdata from the United States, Britain and Japan to examine the effects of family leave coverage on women's employment after childbirth. The United States had no national family leave legislation until...Read more
Jane Waldfogel, Yoshio Higuchi and Masahiro Abe
January 1998