This paper studies the extent to which sleep duration causally affects health, cognitive and non-cognitive development in children and adolescents. Using over 50 thousand time use diaries from two cohorts of Australian children spanning over 16 years, we first document that children sleep...

Life expectancy in Australia has been rapidly increasing. On average, children born today are expected to live 12 years longer than those born in the 1970s. However, there is growing evidence that these gains are not being shared equally among the rich and the poor. In this paper we examine the...

There is widespread recognition that early childhood experiences form the foundation for lifelong health, development and learning trajectories. Reflecting this, numerous services and supports are provided for young children and their families in Australia through the health, education and...

Traditionally the establishment of a household independent of one’s parents has been an important marker of the transition into adulthood. In Australia as in other countries, younger cohorts are spending increasing time in the parental household reflecting a range of social, demographic and...

The relationship between physical activity and child health and development is well-documented, yet the extant literature provides limited causal insight into the amount of physical activity considered optimal for improving any given health or developmental outcome. This paper exploits exogenous...

Child poverty research has been dominated by quantitative approaches, but it is important to fully explore the lived experiences and consequences for children from their perspective. This narrative review describes a small but substantive body of qualitative child-centric literature from...

This narrative review provides a synthesis of current research investigating the impact of poverty on early childhood health, development and learning. In Australia, the rising proportion of adults and children experiencing deep and persistent socio-economic disadvantage and the widening gap in...

We examine the relationship between trait self-control and body weight. Data from a population representative household survey reveal that limited self-control is strongly associated with both objective and subjective measures of unhealthy body weight. Those with limited self-control are...

Adolescence is a period marked by changes in social relationships as well as increased risk of poor mental health. Using three waves of the K-cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 4,048), we examined the role of familial stressful life events, parent support, friend...

We study the effect of exposure to arsenic in groundwater, the main source of arsenic contamination, on a range of education outcomes among children in India. First, using a large nationally representative household survey and exploiting variation in soil textures across districts as an...