The use of genetic markers as instrumental variables (IV) is receiving increasing attention from economists. This paper examines the conditions that need to be met for genetic variants to be used as instruments. We combine the IV literature with that from genetic epidemiology, with an...

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)...

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)...

Research on the socioeconomic determinants of health is often based on parental assessments of their children's health. We assess this approach by comparing directly evaluations from parents, teachers, children and psychiatrists of three aspects of child mental health from two major UK surveys....

Retention of nursing staff within the NHS is a key policy issue. Pay policy - and the ability that trusts and nurses have to react to local working conditions and the cost of living - is likely to be a key lever in reducing attrition among current staff. Understanding the restrictions that the...

This paper explores the links between school, family and areabackground influences during adolescence and later adult economicoutcomes. The empirical analysis is based on data covering the period1979 to 1996, drawn from the 1979 US National Longitudinal Survey ofYouth. For a sample of...

This paper is motivated by the lack of any obvious relationship betweenaggregate poverty and unemployment in Great Britain. We derive aframework based on individuals’ risks of unemployment and poverty,and how these vary over the economic cycle. Analysing the BritishHousehold Panel Survey for...

We provide a critique of the methods that have been used to derive measures ofincome risk and draw attention to the importance of demographic factors as asource of income risk. We also propose new measures of the contribution tototal income risk of demographic and labour market factors....

We examine whether unemployment early in an individual’scareer influences her later employment prospects. We use six yearsof the LFS to create pseudo-cohorts and exploit cross-cohortvariation in unemployment at school-leaving age to identify this.We find heterogeneous responses: for the...