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...

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of children going to school in England who do not speak English as a first language. We investigate whether this has an impact on the educational outcomes of native English speakers at the end of primary school. We show that the negative...

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...

This paper addresses the intergeneration transmission of education and investigates the extent to which early school leaving (at age 16) may be due to variations in permanent income, parental education levels, and shocks to income at this age. Least squares estimation reveals conventional...

This paper provides findings from the UK Labour Force Surveys from 1996 to 2003 on the financial private returns to a degree the "college premium". The data covers a decade when the university participation rate doubled yet we find no significant evidence that the mean return to a degree dropped...