The paper develops two models in which parents support their adult child’s human capital investment through financial transfers and/or coresidence. In one, parents are altruistic, and in the other they make loans to children for purely selfish reasons. Econometric estimates using the first...

This paper examines how economic stratification affects inequality and growth over time. It studies economies where heterogenous agents interact through local public goods or externalities (school funding, neighbourhood effects) and economy-wide linkages (complementary skills, knowledge...

The analysis uses a unique set of data matching mothers and their young adult children to study the impact of family background on young people’s educational attainments. The data is derived from the first five years (1991–5) of the British Household Panel Study. Mother’s education is...

For the first time, nationally representative data on women's employment histories are used to study the gap between women's and men's pay in Great Britain. It is decomposed into a gap attributable to gender differences in human capital characteristics (such as education, work experience, and...

The distribution of human capital and income lies at the center of a nexus of forces that shape a country’s economic, institutional and technological structure. I develop here a unified model to analyse these interactions and their growth consequences. Five main issues are addressed. First, I...

This paper develops a simple model of human capital accumulation and community formation by heterogeneous families, which provides an integrated framework for analysing the local determinants of inequality and growth. Five main conclusions emerge. First, minor differences in education...