Survey under-coverage of top incomes leads to bias in survey-based estimates of overall income inequality. Using income tax record data in combination with survey data is a potential approach to address the problem; we consider here the UK's pioneering 'SPI adjustment' method that implements...

Studies using education policy reforms to isolate causal effects of education on health produce mixed evidence. We analyse an unusually large sample and study chronic health conditions. For identification, we use two major education reforms, one that raised the minimum school leaving age and one...

We discuss methods for calculating multivariate normal probabilities by simulation and two new Stata programs for this purpose: - mdraws - for deriving draws from the standard uniform density using either Halton or pseudo-random sequences, and an egen function - mvnp() - for calculating the...

Assessments of whose income growth is the greatest and whose is the smallest are typically based on comparisons of income changes for income groups (e.g. rich versus poor) or income values (e.g. quantiles). However, income group and quantile composition changes over time because of income...

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...

Individuals suffering from mental health problems are often severely limited in their social and economic functioning. Mental health problems can develop early in life, are frequently chronic in nature, and have an established hereditary component. The extent to which mental illness runs in...

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 data from the 1970 British Cohort Study, we investigate the role of maternal gender role attitudes in explaining the differential educational expectations mothers have for their daughters and sons, and consequently their children's later educational outcomes and labour supply. We find that...

We analyze the dynamics of social assistance benefit (SA) receipt among working-age adults in Britain between 1991 and 2005. The decline in the annual SA receipt rate was driven by a decline in the SA entry rate, rather than by the SA exit rate (which actually declined too). We examine the...

The year-on-year job change rate fell sharply, from 18% in 2005 to around 13% in 2006, according to British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) estimates. This fall coincides with the introduction of dependent interviewing to the BHPS, intended to reduce measurement error and improve consistency....