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...

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,...

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...

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. Using IV methods...

This paper uses the General Household Survey data for the UK to study earnings discrimination between natives and migrants. The key result is that the main source of discrimination is ethnicity rather than migrant status per se. This paper differs from the conventional focus in studies of...

We extend the standard human capital earnings function to include dispersion in the return to schooling by treating the return as a random coefficient. If the rapid expansion in participation in higher education has been brought about by dipping further into the ability distribution, we should...