We compare patterns of movements into and out of poverty by children in Britain and Germany using data from the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 1992-7. Compared to Germany, in Britain poverty persistence is greater, and poverty exit rates in...

In this paper, we investigate the intergenerational transmission of smoking behavior from parents to their children using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, surveyed in 1999 including 813 youths aged 16 through 19. We find strong evidence, that parental smoking significantly increases...

We examine the impact of family income during childhood on the type of secondary school that German children attend, a good indicator of their lifetime socioeconomic attainment. By contrast with several US child outcome studies, we find that late-childhood income is a more important determinant...

The United States has a teenage birth rate that is high relative to that of other developed countries, and falling more slowly. Children of teenagers may experience difficult childhoods and hence be more likely to commit crimes subsequently. I assess to what extent lagged teen birth rates can...

We use fourteen waves of the German panel data to ask whether individuals, after life and labour market events, return to some baseline wellbeing level. Although the strongest life satisfaction effect is often at the time of the event, significant lag and lead effects are present. Men are more...

This paper investigates the impact of unemployment on the propensity to start a family. Unemployment is accompanied by bad occupational prospects and impending economic deprivation, placing the well-being of a future family at risk. I analyze unemployment at the intersection of state-dependence...