The Long Shadow of Income on Trustworthiness

We employ a behavioural measure of trustworthiness obtained from an experiment carried out with a sample of the general British population whose individuals were extensively interviewed on earlier occasions. These previous interviews allow us to have very good income measures, and in particular to construct a measure of relative income that uses past income as a reference point. Our basic finding is that given past income, higher current income increases trustworthiness and, given current income, higher past income reduces trustworthiness. Past income determines the level of financial aspirations and whether or not these are fulfilled by the level of current income affects trustworthiness. But past income has a disproportionately large effect on trustworthiness compared to that predicted by the relative income theory, and this leads us to suspect that past income may also capture heterogeneity in relevant subjects’ dispositions, with more opportunistic subjects being less trustworthy and having higher average incomes. We suggest and estimate a two-tier model in which relative income has the same positive effect within each past income class, but people in higher past income classes have a lower fundamental levels of trustworthiness.trustworthiness, relative income

Birth Weight and the Dynamics of Early Cognitive and Behavioural Development

In this paper we explore the impact of birth weight on children's cognitive and behavioural outcomes using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. In order to deal with the endogeneity of birth weight we use an estimator based on the eliminant method. When coupled with ordinary least squares, this estimator allows us to bound the effects of birth weight. The results show that birth weight has significant but very small effects on male cognitive development at age 3 and on female cognitive and behavioural outcomes at age 3. We also find that birth weight affects age 5 outcomes only through previous achievements, and that the overall impact fades out over time. These findings call into question the effectiveness of birth weight as a policy target.birth weight, production function, child development

Intergenerational Economic Mobility and Assortative Mating

We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Survey to estimate the extent of intergenerational economic mobility in a framework that highlights the role played by assortative mating. We find that assortative mating plays an important role. On average about 40-50 percent of the covariancebetween parents' and own permanent family income can be attributed to the person to whom one is married. This effect is driven by strong spouse correlations in human capital.Intergenerational links; Marriage market; Assortative mating; Occupational prestige

Intrafamily Resource Allocations: A Dynamic Model of Birth Weight

This paper estimates a model of dynamic intrahousehold investment behavior which incorporates family fixed effects and child endowment heterogeneity. This framework is applied to large American and British survey data on birth outcomes, with focus on the effects of antenatal parental smoking and maternal labor supply net of other maternal behavior and child characteristics. We find that maternal smoking during pregnancy reduces birth weight and fetal growth, while paternal smoking has virtually no effect. Mothers' work interruptions of up to two months before birth have a positive effect on birth outcomes, especially among British children. Parental behavior appears to respond to permanent family-specific unobservables and to child idiosyncratic endowments in a way that suggests that parents have equal concerns, rather than efficiency motives, in allocating their prenatal inputs across children. Evidence of equal concerns emerges also from the analysis of breastfeeding decisions, although the effects in this case are weaker.birth outcomes, smoking, mother's work, sibling estimators, instrumental variables, child health production functions

Fertility expectations and residential mobility in Britain

BACKGROUND It is plausible that people take into account anticipated changes in family size in choosing where to live. But estimation of the impact of anticipated events on current transitions in an event history framework is challenging because expectations must be measured in some way and, like indicators of past childbearing, expected future childbearing may be endogenous with respect to housing decisions. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study is to estimate how expected changes in family size affect residential movement in Great Britain in a way which addresses these challenges. METHODS We use longitudinal data from a mature 18-wave panel survey, the British Household Panel Survey, which incorporates a direct measure of fertility expectations. The statistical methods allow for the potential endogeneity of expectations in our estimation and testing framework. RESULTS We produce evidence consistent with the idea that past childbearing mainly affects residential mobility through expectations of future childbearing, not directly through the number of children in the household. But there is heterogeneity in response. In particular, fertility expectations have a much greater effect on mobility among women who face lower costs of mobility, such as private tenants. CONCLUSIONS Our estimates indicate that expecting to have a(nother) child in the future increases the probability of moving by about 0.036 on average, relative to an average mobility rate of 0.14 per annum in our sample. Contribution: Our contribution is to incorporate anticipation of future events into an empirical model of residential mobility. We also shed light on how childbearing affects mobility

Migration Versus Immobility, and Ties to Parents

We investigate the association between geographic proximity to parents and the likelihood of moving longer distances (e.g. at least 40 km), using British panel data from the Understanding Society study and probit regression. We also look at the extent to which this association diminishes by introducing measures of frequency of contact, interaction with neighbors and length of residence. Using a number of different models and samples, we find that living far from parents increases longer distance mobility. Seeing parents weekly and more interactions with neighbors reduce longer distance mobility, but its association with parental proximity remains substantial. The positive effect of living far from parents on the likelihood of moving longer distances is also found in subsamples of those who have lived in their current residence for 5 years or less and of the highly educated, while the negative effect of seeing parents weekly is also found in these subsamples as well as in a subsample of those living close to parents. Even though endogeneity cannot be ruled out completely, these findings show a robust association between family ties and the likelihood of moving a long distance

English fertility heads south: Understanding the recent decline

Background: Fertility in England fell substantially during the past decade. The total fertility rate reached its historically lowest level in 2020. Objective: To improve our understanding of the decline in English fertility by using data on individual women during 2009-2020 from Understanding Society, which is a panel survey of the members of approximately 40,000 households. Methods: Estimation of a model of age and parity-specific birth rates on individual data, including year-effects, and cross-validation of it with external sources from registration data. Translation of the parameter estimates into more easily interpreted concepts such as period parity progression ratios and the total fertility rate (along with the standard errors for each). Results: The decline in first-birth rates appears to be primarily responsible for the decline in the TFR during the past decade, and women with an education below degree level experienced a larger fertility decline. Conclusions: If recent period fertility patterns are sustained, England is embarking on a regime of a high level of childlessness not seen since that among women born in the early 1920s. Contribution: Individual-level panel data is used to estimate a model of parity-specific birth rates, which is cross-validated against registration data and used to provide insights into what lies behind the recent decline in English fertility

Trends in Educational Mobility: How Does China Compare to Europe and the United States?

Despite impressive rise in school enrollment rates over the past few decades, there are concerns about growing inequality of educa- tional opportunity in China. In this paper, we examine the level and trend of educational mobility in China, and compare them to those of Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. Educational mo- bility is defined as the association between parents’ and children’s educational attainment. We show that China’s economic boom has been accompanied by a large decline in relative educational mobility chances, as measured by odds ratios. To elaborate, relative rates of educational mobility in China were, by international standards, quite high for those who grew up under state socialism. For the most recent cohorts, however, educational mobility rates have dropped to a level that is comparable to those of European countries, though it is still higher than the US level.Our research is supported by an ESRC research grant, award number ES/L015927/1

Trust and Strength of Family Ties: New Experimental Evidence

We provide a conceptual replication of an experimental study that uncovered a robust correlation between the strength of individuals’ family ties and their distrust of strangers, striving to establish whether the link is causal. Using a different subjects pool and an online setting, we repeat the binary trust-game experiment from Ermisch and Gambetta and enrich it by manipulating the payoffs to create a low-trust and high-trust environment. The key finding is corroborated, but as expected, only in the high-trust environment. The two environments further allow us to impose a diff-and-diff design on the data, which rules out selection of low-trusting individuals into strong-tied families and gives us indirect evidence of causation, namely, that having strong family ties stunts the development of trust in strangers. Our findings support the emancipatory theory of trust proposed by Toshio Yamagishi and could be interpreted as uncovering the micro foundations of classic ethnographic studies, such as that by Edward Banfield, which described how subcultures fostering tight bonds within families or small groups make cooperation harder to be achieved

The distributional impact of COVID-19: Geographic variation in mortality in England

Background: By their nature, the impact of epidemics on mortality varies geographically, suggesting that the geographical impact of an epidemic implies a social impact. Objective: To examine the association between two measures of the social composition of a local area and age- and sex-standardised Covid-19 and other mortality in the period 1 March to 31 July 2020. The measures are how deprived an area is and what proportion of its population is non-white. Methods: Using spatial autoregressive regression we analyse geographical variation in age- and sex-standardised Covid-19 mortality among English local authorities between 1 March and 31 July 2020 in relation to measures of social composition, and we compare it with mortality from non-Covid sources in the same period, and with all-causes mortality in 2018. Results: Areas with higher social deprivation have a higher Covid-19 mortality rate, but the association is much weaker than between social deprivation and mortality rates more generally. An area's proportion non-white has a strong positive association with Covid-19 mortality, in contrast to a negative association with 2020 non-Covid and with 2018 mortality. Conclusions: Covid-19 mortality is related to the social composition of areas in different ways than current non-Covid mortality or past mortality. Contribution: The paper provides the first demonstration of the distinct distributional impact of mortality in relation to the Covid-19 virus by the social composition of areas in England