Abstract: High school students from non-elite backgrounds are less likely to have peers with elite educated parents than their elite counterparts in Norway. We show this difference in social capital is a key driver of the high intergenerational persistence in elite education. We identify a positive elite peer effect on enrolment in elite programmes and disentangle underlying mechanisms. Exploiting a lottery in the assessment system, a causal mediation analysis shows the overall positive peer effect reflects a positive effect on application behaviour (conditional on GPA), which dominates a negative effect on student GPA. We consider implications for income mobility finding that encouraging further mixing between elite and non-elite students in high school could improve mobility across the whole distribution. 

Abstract: Early Childhood Interventions (ECI) offering disadvantaged children preschool and family support services in the US show long-lasting health impacts. Can these benefits hold when these programs are offered to all children in contexts with universal healthcare? We evaluate the short- and medium-term health impacts of Sure Start, a universal integrated ECI in England, exploiting its 11-year rollout and administrative hospitalizations data. One additional Sure Start center per thousand age-eligible children increases hospitalizations by 10% at age 1, but reduces them by 8-9% across ages 11-15. Impacts are concentrated in disadvantaged areas and likely driven by both health and non-health services.  

Abstract: Standard intergenerational measures have been shown to understate the long-run persistence of socioeconomic advantages in developed countries. We study theoretically and empirically whether this pattern extends to less developed settings, using Indonesia as a case study. Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and Census data, we study multigenerational correlations in education across three generations. Contrary to previous findings, we observe greater multigenerational mobility than parent-child correlations alone would suggest. We develop a theoretical framework to highlight two key factors influencing multigenerational dynamics in developing countries: (1) financial and credit constraints, and (2) cultural norms related to marital sorting. To confirm  their relevance, we exploit regional variations in exposure to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and in marital customs.

Abstract: Early years programs have the potential to significantly enhance children’s developmental outcomes, but large-scale implementations often fail to replicate the successes observed in smaller trials. Identifying the drivers of successful outcomes is therefore essential to designing effective and scalable interventions. This paper provides the first causal evidence on the role of a key input—workforce quality—in achieving developmental gains through large-scale early years interventions. Leveraging the quasi-random assignment of family nurses to families within a large-scale home visiting program in England, we estimate each home visitor’s effectiveness in improving program retention and children’s physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development. We find considerable variation in effectiveness: a one standard deviation increase in home visitor quality is associated with a 0.20 standard deviation improvement in cognitive outcomes and a 0.23 standard deviation improvement in socio-emotional development at age 2. A family nurse’s ability to retain mothers in the program is uncorrelated with their ability to improve child outcomes—suggesting that retention is not a reliable proxy for program effectiveness. Despite access to detailed data on worker characteristics, supervisory assessments, and program implementation, we find that traditional structural indicators—such as formal qualifications—are poor predictors of workforce effectiveness. Instead, process quality—how the program is delivered—emerges as far more important. We also identify key mechanisms through which effective home visitors operate, including improvements in maternal mental health and reductions in risky behaviors during pregnancy. These findings underscore that maintaining high workforce quality and strong implementation practices is essential for achieving success in large-scale early childhood interventions

Abstract: Childhood is a critical period for development of mental health: episodes of mental illness during this time often recur in adulthood but early intervention can be highly effective at reducing this persistence. Understanding determinants of child mental health is therefore key for the design of timely effective interventions. In this paper we study the impact of the COVID pandemic on the mental health of school-age children in England. We focus on how the significant pandemic induced disruptions to parental employment affected children and through what mechanisms, using unique nationally representative data we collected. We estimate an augmented Value Added model accounting for potential measurement error in child mental health scores. We find that changes in parental labour market circumstances over the course of the pandemic had a significant and negative impact on children’s mental health of around 9% of a standard deviation equivalent to around 30% of the total average decrease in mental health in our sample over the course of the pandemic. Granular data on labour market experiences over the pandemic shows that it was stability of parental labour market trajectories that was key for child well-being. Mechanisms for the adverse impact of disruptions are likely to include negative impacts on actual and expected household economic situation as well as on parental psychological well-being. 

Abstract: In this paper we examine different channels through which poverty affects child outcomes, as well as the evidence regarding the magnitude of their impacts. We begin by discussing the family investment model, which highlights the constraints that poverty or lack of income pose on a family's ability to purchase goods or services that contribute to the child's overall development, and the family stress model, which emphasises the emotional toll that experiencing poverty can have on parents and (directly and indirectly) on children. We then devote special attention to a more recent perspective on the family stress model, originating at the intersection of cognitive and developmental psychology and behavioural economics, which posits that another pathway through which poverty-induced stress can affect family well-being is through the effect of poverty on parental cognitive functioning.

Abstract: In light of the dramatic rise in mental health disorders among adolescents seen in the past decade across the world, there is an urgent need for robust evidence on what works to combat this trend. This paper provides the first robust evaluation of the impacts on school outcomes of 6-year funding programme (HeadStart) for area-level mental health interventions for adolescents. Exploiting educational administrative data on ten cohorts of state-educated secondary school students, we use the synthetic control method to construct counterfactual outcomes for areas that received the funding. We show that the funding did not affect students’ absenteeism or academic attainment, but it prevented around 800 students (c. 10% of students typically excluded yearly) from being excluded in its first year. The transient nature of this effect suggests that sustained funding for intervention is a necessary but not sufficient condition to maintain programme effectiveness over time. 

Abstract: Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish individuals born in the 1930s. We find that absence significantly reduces contemporaneous academic performance, final educational attainment and labor income throughout the life-cycle. The findings are consistent with a dynamic model of human capital formation, whereby absence causes small immediate learning losses which cumulate to larger human capital losses over time and lead to worse labor market performance. 

Abstract: Many governments are considering expanding childcare subsidies to increase the labour force participation of parents (especially mothers) with young children. In this paper, we study the potential impact of such a policy by comparing the effects of offering free part-time childcare and of expanding this offer to the whole school day in the context of England. We use two different strategies exploiting free childcare eligibility rules based on date of birth. Both strategies suggest that free part-time childcare only marginally affects the labour force participation of mothers whose youngest child is eligible, but expanding from part-time to full-time free childcare leads to significant increases in labour force participation and employment of these mothers. These effects emerge immediately and grow over the months following entitlement. We find no evidence that parents adjust their labour supply in anticipation of their children's entitlement to free childcare.

Abstract: Children’s experiences during early childhood are critical for their cognitive and socioemotional development, two key dimensions of human capital. However, children from low-income backgrounds often grow up lacking stimulation and basic investments, which leads to developmental deficits that are difficult, if not impossible, to reverse later in life without intervention. The existence of these deficits is a key driver of inequality and contributes to the intergenerational transmission of poverty. In this article, we discuss the framework used in economics to model parental investments and early childhood development and use it as an organizing tool to review some of the empirical evidence on early childhood research. We then present results from various important early childhood interventions, with an emphasis on developing countries. Bringing these elements together, we draw conclusions on what we have learned and provide some directions for future research. 

Although there is a large gap between Black and White American life expectancies, the gap fell 48.9% between 1990-2018, mainly due to mortality declines among Black Americans. We examine age-specific mortality trends and racial gaps in life expectancy in rich and poor U.S. areas and with reference to six European countries.

Inequalities in life expectancy are starker in the U.S. than in Europe. In 1990 White Americans and Europeans in rich areas had similar overall life expectancy, while life expectancy for White Americans in poor areas was lower. But since then even rich White Americans have lost ground relative to Europeans. Meanwhile, the gap in life expectancy between Black Americans and Europeans decreased by 8.3%.

Black life expectancy increased more than White life expectancy in all U.S. areas, but improvements in poorer areas had the greatest impact on the racial life expectancy gap. The causes that contributed the most to Black mortality reductions included: Cancer, homicide, HIV, and causes originating in the fetal or infant period.

Life expectancy for both Black and White Americans plateaued or slightly declined after 2012, but this stalling was most evident among Black Americans even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. If improvements had continued at the 1990-2012 rate, the racial gap in life expectancy would have closed by 2036. European life expectancy also stalled after 2014. Still, the comparison with Europe suggests that mortality rates of both Black and White Americans could fall much further across all ages and in both rich and poor areas. 

Abstract: In this paper, we study the evolution of age-group- and gender-specific mortality and mortality inequality in England between 2003 and 2016, by comparing small geographic areas ranked by deprivation and grouped into bins of similar population size. We show that across all age groups, but especially in the older age groups (65+), there has been a clear and significant reduction in rates of mortality since 2003. In spite of these improvements, we continue to see significant inequalities in mortality across most age groups in 2016 and evidence of rising inequalities among women in the 65+ and men in the 80+ age groups. Furthermore, we see a striking stalling of the downwards trend in mortality and mortality inequality observed between 2003 and 2010 during the years of economic austerity in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in England between 2010 and 2016. Analysis of specific causes of death among adults aged 20–79 allows us to examine the drivers and dynamics of these trends in more depth, as well as to consider scope for, and types of, interventions that would be appropriate at different ages.

• Abstract: We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline. We estimate the determinants of parents' material and time investments in these children and evaluate the impact of the treatment on such investments. We then estimate the production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills. The effects of the program can be explained by increases in parental investments, emphasizing the importance of parenting interventions at an early age. 

• Online appendix

• Coverage: Yale News

• Abstract: We assess the extent to which the large sibling correlations in substance use are causal. Our primary approach is based on a joint dynamic model of the behavior of older and younger siblings that allows for family specific effects, individual specific heterogeneity, and state dependence. We use the model to simulate the dynamic response of substance use to the behavior of the older sibling. Overall, we find that substance use is affected by the example of older siblings but only a small fraction of the sibling correlation is causal. 

Abstract: COVID-19 has uprooted many aspects of parents' daily routines, from their jobs to their childcare arrangements. In this paper, we provide a novel description of how parents in England living in two-parent opposite-gender families divided paid and unpaid work during the first national lockdown. We find that mothers' paid work took a larger hit than that of fathers on three key margins: participation, hours of paid work, and uninterrupted hours. These gender differences in paid work cannot be explained by the industries and occupations in which parents worked prior to lockdown. Instead, the differences grow once we account for these factors, which is consistent with gender differences in the lockdown’s impact on labour supply. We find that mothers spent substantially longer doing childcare and housework than their partners.  Gender differences in the allocation of domestic work cannot be straightforwardly explained by differences in employment or prior earnings. Substantial gender asymmetries emerge when one partner stopped working for pay during the crisis: mothers always did substantially more domestic work than fathers in their equivalent situation.

Coverage: The Guardian

Abstract: This paper combines novel data on the time use, home learning practices and economic circumstances of families with children during the COVID-19 lockdown with pre-lockdown data from the UK Time Use Survey to characterise the time use of children and how it changed during lockdown, and to gauge the extent to which changes in time use and learning practices during this period are likely to reinforce the already large gaps in educational attainment between children from poorer and better-off families.We find considerable heterogeneity in children’s learning experiences-amount of time spent learning, activities undertaken during this time and availability of resources to support learning. Concerningly, but perhaps unsurprisingly,this heterogeneity is strongly associated with family income and in some instances more so than before lockdown. Furthermore,our analysis suggests that any impacts of inequalities in time spent learning between poorer and richer children are likely to be compounded by inequalities not only in learning resources available at home, but also those provided by schools. 

Coverage: BBC news, Radio 4 The World Tonight, BBC  Television News at 6/10, IFS Podcast

Abstract: In England, school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic represented a sudden but relatively longlasting shock to children’s education. During the first lockdown, schools were closed to all but the most vulnerable children and those with key worker parents from 23 March to the end of May; they began to reopen in June and July, but some children remained out of the classroom until September. In this paper, we follow a panel of children between April/May and June/July 2020 to document how home learning experiences changed over the course of the first lockdown, and how these changes were influenced by the partial and voluntary return to school over this period. 

We find little evidence that children adapted to home learning over the course of the lockdown; instead, learning time fell among those who were not offered the chance to return to school. Pupils who returned to school saw their learning time rise substantially, even conditional on observable and unobservable characteristics. However, while the opportunity to return to in-person schooling at least part-time was relatively evenly distributed, better-off parents were around 50% more likely to send their children back to school when given the choice. Since better-off students also increased their learning time by more when they returned to school, our results suggest that substantial targeted support will be needed to help disadvantaged pupils catch up, even after all children are back in the classroom. 

Abstract

Introduction

The Ages & Stages Questionnaire 3rd Edition (ASQ®-3) is a tool to measure developmental delay for children aged between 1 - 66 months originally developed in the United States. This measure has been collected in England since 2015 as a part of mandated 2-2½-year health visiting reviews and collated nationally in the Community Services Dataset (CSDS). CSDS is known to be incomplete and to-date there have not been any published analyses of ASQ®-3 held within CSDS.

Objectives

This study aimed to a) identify a subset of complete child development data for children aged two in England using ASQ®-3 data in CSDS between 2018/19-2020/21; b) use this subset of data to analyse child development age 2-2½-years in England.

Methods

This study compared counts of ASQ®-3 records in CSDS by local authority and financial quarter against national, publicly available Health Visitor Service Delivery Metrics (HVSDM) to identify local authorities with complete ASQ®-3 records in CSDS. This study described child development in this subset of the data using both a binary cut-off of whether a child reached expected level of development and the continuous ASQ®-3 score.

Results

Among the 226,505 children from 64 local authorities in the sample with complete ASQ®-3 data, 86.2% met expected level of development. Children from the most deprived neighbourhoods (82.6%), children recorded as Black (78.9%), and boys (81.7%) were less likely to meet expected level of development.

Conclusions

To fully understand early child development across England, the completeness of ASQ®-3 data in the CSDS requires improvement. Second, in order to interpret the national CSDS data on child development, ASQ®-3 should be standardised and validated in an English context with attention paid to implementation and subsequent referral and support pathways. Our study provides a minimum estimate of children needing developmental support (13.8%), with many more children likely to be experiencing moderate or mild delay but not identified by the ASQ®-3 cut-offs for expected development.

Abstract: School absenteeism is a significant social and public health problem, and it has considerable negative consequences on the development of children and adolescents not only in the short term but also in the long term. We investigated special education needs (SEN) as a risk factor for absenteeism. For 418,455 mainstream secondary school students from 151 local authorities in England, multilevel linear regression models were run to investigate the association between SEN, SEN types and absenteeism during their secondary school period from year 7 to year 11. Local authority level variation was also investigated. Adolescents with SEN were more likely to be absent than their peers without SEN. Of adolescents with SEN, those with physical disability, followed by those with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties had the highest rates of absenteeism. Absenteeism rates increased as adolescents grew older. The association between absenteeism and having any SEN varied substantially across Local authorities. The results suggest that early interventions/preventative measures could mitigate loss of schooling due to absence. Moreover, the substantial variation in attendance for children across different local authorities suggest that there may be scope for local authorities to influence absence rates among adolescents.