This paper shows that there are large differences in cognitive and socio-emotional development between children from rich and poor backgrounds at the age of 3, and that this gap widens by the age of 5. Children from poor backgrounds also face much less advantageous "early childhood caring...

This paper compares patterns of private school attendance in the UK and Australia. About 6.5% of school children in the UK attend a private school, while 33% do so in Australia. We use comparable household panel data from the two countries to model attendance at a private school at age 15 or 16...

In this paper we use English school level data from 1993 to 2008 aggregated up to small neighbourhood areas to look at the determinants of the demand for private education in England from the ages of 7 until 15 (the last year of compulsory schooling). We focus on the relative importance of price...

Using a large and novel administrative dataset, this paper investigates variation in returnsto different higher education ‘degrees’ (subject-institution combinations) in the United King-dom. Conditioning on a rich set background characteristics, it finds substantial variation inreturns, even...

School funding per pupil increased substantially between 1999-00 and 2012-13 in England. It also became more varied across schools with higher levels of funds targeted at more deprived schools. Real-terms increases in funding per pupil were much larger for the most deprived group of primary and...

The paper estimates the returns to education for a cohort of individuals born in Britain in March 1958 who have been followed since birth until the age of 33. The data used has a wealth of information on family background including parental education, social class and interest shown in the...

The paper estimates the returns to education for a cohort of individuals born in Britain in March 1958 who have been followed since birth until the age of 33. The data used has a wealth of information on family background including parental education, social class and interest shown in the...

As a result of the Child Poverty Act (2010), current and future governments are committed to reducing the rate of relative income child poverty in the UK to 10% by 2020-21. This paper looks in detail at the progress made towards this goal under the previous Labour administrations. Direct tax and...