Are social (occupational) classes coherent, distinct entities? While they reflect an underlying reality, they are more fragmented than theory suggests. It is hypothesised that skill mismatches mean that each class includes a substantial proportion of poorly paid people who could be in the class...

This paper provides a self-contained introduction to the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), concentrating on aspects relevant to analysis of the distribution of household income. I discuss BHPS design features and how data on net household income are derived. The BHPS net household income...

We explore the relative influence of family and neighbourhood on educational attainment and how this varies by sibling type. Using English register data we find sibling correlations in exam scores of 0.563 at the end of primary school and of 0.621 at the end of compulsory schooling. The...

The Department for Work and Pensions committed itself to exploring the take-up of Carer’s Allowance at the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in May 2009. This study was commissioned as a first step in that enquiry. The report summarises the questions and discusses possible research...

Previous studies have found that firstborn children enjoy a distinct advantage over their later- born counterparts in terms of educational attainment. This paper advances the state of knowledge in this area in two ways. First, it analyses the role of young peoples aspirations, estimating the...

We examine the effect of survey measurement error on the empirical relationship between child mental health and personal and family characteristics, and between child mental health and educational progress. Our contribution is to use unique UK survey data that contains (potentially biased)...

Using EU-SILC data for 2005 and 2011, we compare the role of family background on labour outcomes in three EU countries that experienced large swings in unemployment during this period. We use a multidimensional family background indicator that avoids undesirable cohort effects. Our results...