This paper presents evidence on the fertility effect of welfare from a set of reforms that took place in the UK in 1999 and that substantially increased support for poorer families with children. The reforms, including the introduction of the Working Families Tax Credit and an increase in...

The last thirty years saw dramatic increases in the proportion of children living in lone parent households. In 1997 the incoming Labour government initiated a series of policy reforms aimed at reducing this high level of child poverty. A key element of their strategy was a move towards...

Interventions that improve childhood health directly improve the quality of life and, in addition, have multiplier effects, producing sustained population and economic gains in poor countries. We suggest how contemporary global institutions shaping the development, pricing and distribution of...

This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990’s, and one for the late 1990’s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and completion rates have grown over time. It...

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 of durable goods for low- and higher-income families between the pre-reform...

We study charitable giving within social groups. Exploiting a unique dataset, we establish three key relationships between social group size and fundraising outcomes: (i) a positive relationship between group size and the total number of donations; (ii) a negative relationship between group size...

The last thirty years saw dramatic increases in the employment rates of married/co-habiting mothers in the UK. Yet the employment rates of lone mothers were lower in the early 1990s than in the late 1970s, at just under 40 percent; and 25 percentage points lower than those of married mothers. In...

This paper highlights an aspect of the enormous and little-exploited potential of the Demographic and Health Surveys, namely the use of data on siblings. Such data can be used to control for family-level unobserved heterogeneity that might confound the relationship of interest and to study...

We study charitable giving within social groups. Exploiting a unique dataset, we establish three key relationships between social group size and fundraising outcomes: (i) a positive relationship between group size and the total number of donations; (ii) a negative relationship between group size...

This paper uses a survey-based approach to test alternative methods of channeling tax relief to donors – as a tax rebate for the donor or as a matched payment to the receiving charity. On accounting grounds these two are equivalent but, in line with earlier experimental studies, we find that...