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...

This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more left-wing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more right-wing. Parents, politicians and voters are probably not aware of this phenomenon -- nor are social scientists. The paper discusses its economic and evolutionary roots. It also...

Charitable bequests are a major source of income for charities but surprisingly little is known about them. The aim of this paper is to propose a multi-stage framework for analysing the bequest decision and to examine the evidence for Great Britain provided by new data on estates. The novelty of...

Research on intergenerational income mobility has shown stronger persistence between parental and offspring's income in the UK than in Sweden. We use similar data sets for the two countries to explore whether these cross-national differences show up already early in offspring's life in outcomes...

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...

We evaluate the short- and medium-term health impacts of Sure Start, a large-scale and universal early childhood program in England. We exploit the rollout of the program and implement a difference-in-difference approach, combining data on the exact location and opening date of Sure Start...

This paper investigates whether people's ability to withstand and adapt to one of the most important economic shocks - job loss - is determined early on in childhood. Using nationally representative longitudinal data that tracks almost 3,000 children into adulthood, we show that the negative...