There are growing concerns about the impact of pollution on maternal and infant health. In the UK in 2018, 36% of local authorities had levels of PM2.5 where exposure exceeded the annual level recommended by the World Health Organisation at the time. Using a population database of births in...

It is widely assumed that contingent forms of employment, such as fixed-term contracts, labour-hire and casual employment, are associated with low quality jobs. This hypothesis is tested using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally...

Suspension from school is a commonly-used, yet controversial, school disciplinary measure. This paper uses unique survey data to estimate the impact of suspension on the educational outcomes of those suspended. It finds that while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the...

We use unique survey data linked to nearly a decade of administrative welfare data to examine the relationship between early marijuana use (at age 14 or younger) and young people's educational outcomes. We find evidence that early marijuana use is related to educational penalties that are...

This paper studies the prevalence and nature of zero-hours contracts (ZHCs) in the UK labour market. The headline count of ZHC workers based on the Labour Force Survey has long underestimated and continues to underestimate the number of workers in ZHC or ZHC-like jobs. ZHC jobs and workers are...

This paper exploits rarely-used longitudinal data to examine the impacts of disability onset on benefit receipt in Britain over the period 2004–2012. Differences in the timing of onset are exploited for identification in a framework that combines propensity score matching with...

The increasing numbers of workers in employment with little to no job security, so-called precarious employment, has led to a range of concerns over worker outcomes. A particular focus is the effect of instability on health in general, and particularly, mental health. We provide new evidence on...

A range of evidence suggests that non-standard jobs, including fixed-term and other temporary jobs such as casual jobs, pay lower wages than more standard, permanent jobs, even after controlling for differences in worker and job characteristics. A recent literature suggests this is also the case...

The introduction of the Australian Paid Parental Leave scheme in 2011 provides a rare opportunity to estimate the labour supply and employment impacts of publicly-funded paid leave on mothers in the first year post-partum. The almost universal coverage of the scheme coupled with detailed survey...

We compare alternative methods for estimating immigrant wage and employment assimilation using unique panel data over 2001-2009 for a large, nationally-representative sample of immigrants. Previous assimilation estimates have been mainly based on cross-sectional data and have therefore suffered...