Having a female firstborn child significantly increases the probability that a woman’s first marriage breaks up. Recent work has exploited this exogenous variation to measure the effect of divorce on economic outcomes, and has concluded that divorce has little effect on women’s mean...

In this paper we explore the association between family income and children’s cognitive ability (IQ and school performance), socio-emotional outcomes (self esteem, locus of control and behavioural problems) and physical health (risk of obesity). We develop a decomposition technique that allows...

The concept of social exclusion has been widely debated in Europe but its application to children has seen relatively little discussion. What could be meant by exclusion of children is the first main theme of the paper. Among other things, I consider the choice of reference group, the...

Parental involvement in their children’s lives can have a lasting impact on well-being. More involved parents convey to their children that they are interested in their development, and this in turn signals to the child that their future is valued. However, what happens in socio-economically...

In this paper we examine the concept of "vulnerability" (Townsend 1994) within the context of income mobility of the poor. We test for the dynamics of vulnerable households in the UK using Waves 1 - 12 of the British Household Panel Survey and find that, of three different types of risks that we...

The second-order stochastic dominance criterion for inequality analysis introduced by Atkinson (1970) covers nearly all well-known inequality indices. The same cannot be said, in respect of poverty indices, for the second-order stochastic dominance criterion for poverty analysis introduced by...

This paper provides a review and critical discussion of indicators, which attempt to combine the measurement of sustainability with that of well-being. It starts with some commonly agreed definitions of sustainability, showing how most well-being indicators tell us little if anything at all...

We focus on the statics and dynamics of poverty in Spain using data from the first eight waves of the European Community Household Panel from 1994 to 2001, a period not sufficiently covered by recent literature. The results confirm the pattern of poverty changes noted by other authors for the...

This paper examines whether and how socio-economic status is associated with children’s behavioural development in today’s children. Using a large cohort of English children born in the early 1990s we find significant social inequalities in several dimensions of child behaviour at age 7. We...

Non-communicable diseases account for more than 50% of deaths in adults aged 15–59 years in most low income countries. Depression and diabetes carry an enormous public health burden, making the identification of risk factors for these disorders an important strategy. While socio-economic...