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...

Governments, over much of the developed world, make significant financial transfers to parents with dependent children. For example, in the US the recently introduced Child Tax Credit (CTC), which goes to almost all children, costs almost $1billion each week, or about 0.4% of GNP. The UK has...

This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental education and income on child health. We are particularly concerned about spurious correlation arising from the potential endogeneity of parental income and education. Using an instrumental variables approach,...

Many countries provide extensive in-kind public transfers for specific needs of particular client groups such as the elderly, the disabled, and children. However, this may crowd out private expenditures on the goods in question and, to some extent, undermine the case for not simply giving cash....

This paper addresses the intergenerational transmission of education and investigates the extent to which early school leaving (at age 16) may be due to variations in parental background. An important contribution of the paper is to distinguish between the causal effects of parental income and...

This paper evaluates the short- and medium-term health impacts of offering families with children under 5 universal access to centres providing childcare, health services, parenting support and parental job assistance. Increased access to these centres during early childhood increases the...

We investigate the relationship between early school-leaving and parental education and paternal income using UK Labour Force Survey data. OLS estimation reveals modest effects of income, stronger effects of maternal education relative to paternal, and stronger effects on sons than daughters....

Early Childhood Interventions (ECI) offering disadvantaged children preschool and family support services in the US show long-lasting health impacts. Can these benefits hold when these programs are offered to all children in contexts with universal healthcare? We evaluate the short- and...