In this paper we explore the impact of birth weight on children's cognitive and behavioural outcomes using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. In order to deal with the endogeneity of birth weight we use an estimator based on the eliminant method. When coupled with ordinary least squares,...

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up. Using matched data from...

We study the importance of childhood socioeconomic conditions in explaining differences in life expectancy using data from a sample of around 5,000 children collected in the UK in 1937-39, who have been traced through official death records up to 2005. We estimate a number of duration of life...

Immigrant children in the US tend to perform worse in reading, mathematics, and science compared to native children. This paper explores how much of such differences in achievement can be accounted for by a lack of English proficiency. To identify the causal effect of English proficiency on...

We consider the extent to which societal shifts have been responsible for an increased tendency for females to sort into traditional male roles over time, versus childhood factors. Drawing on three cohort studies, which follow individuals born in the UK in 1958, 1970 and 2000, we compare the...

Atmospheric pollution was an important side effect of coal-fired industrialisation in the nineteenth century. In Britain emissions of black smoke were on the order of fifty times as high as they were a century later. In this paper we examine the effects of these emissions on child development by...

In-work support through the tax-benefit system has proved to be an effective way of increasing labour supply of lone mothers and first earners in couples in a number of OECD countries. At the same time these instruments usually create negative employment incentives for secondary earners. This in...

This study investigates how maternal working hours are related to various outcomes in children aged 11 to 15 using a sample of mothers and adolescents in the British Household Panel Survey. Research that examines the effects of maternal employment on children has been motivated by the rapid...

This paper models child employment and parental pocket money decisions as a non-cooperative game. Assuming that the child human capital is a household public good and that the relationship between child human capital and employment is concave, we compare the welfare obtained under different...

This research documents the effects of different forms of family disruptions – measured by separation, divorce and death – on personality development of British children included in the 1970 British Cohort Study. There are statistically significant correlations between family disruptions...