This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental background on child health. We are particularly concerned with the extent to which their finding that income effects on child health are the result of spurious correlation rather than some causal mechanism. A...

Many theories of residential mobility contend that individuals express a sequence of moving desires, intentions and expectations prior to moving. Much research has investigated how individuals form these pre-move thoughts, with a largely separate literature examining actual mobility. Only a few...

The literature on neighbourhood effects suggests that the lack of social mobility of some groups has a spatial dimension. It is thought that those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods are the least likely to achieve upward mobility because of a range of negative neighbourhood effects. Most...

This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits in adolescence and performance in high school using a large and recent cohort study. In particular, we investigate the impact of locus of control, self-esteem and work ethics at age 15, on test scores at age 16, and on subject...

Selective mobility into and out of neighbourhoods is one of the driving forces of segregation. Empirical research has revealed who wants to leave certain types of neighbourhoods or who leaves certain neighbourhoods. A factor which has received little attention so far is that some residents will...

Based on the notion that entrepreneurship is a 'local event', the literature argues that self-employed workers and entrepreneurs are 'rooted' in place. This paper tests the 'residential rootedness'-hypothesis of self-employment by examining for Germany and the UK whether the self-employed are...

Conceptually, adopting a life course approach when analysing residential mobility enables us to investigate how experiencing particular life events affects mobility decision-making and behaviour throughout individual lifetimes. Yet although a growing body of longitudinal research links mobility...

Residential mobility decisions are known to be made at the household level. However, most empirical analyses of residential mobility relate moving behaviour to the housing and neighbourhood satisfaction and pre-move thoughts of individuals. If partners in a couple do not share evaluations of...

This paper is concerned with the relationship between class size and the student outcome length of time in post-compulsory schooling. Research on this topic has been problematic partly because omitted unobservables, like parents' incomes and education levels, are likely to be correlated with...