Children born at the end of the academic year have lower educational attainment, on average, than those born at the start of the academic year. Previous research shows that the difference is most pronounced early in pupils’ school lives, but remains evident and statistically significant...

In this paper we consider whether certain countries are particularly adept (or particularly poor) at getting children from disadvantaged homes to study for a bachelor’s degree. A series of university access models are estimated for four English speaking countries (England, Canada,...

This study sets out to identify the incidence and development of disabled children’s problem behaviours, including conduct, peer, hyperactivity and emotional problems during the early years using the Millennium Cohort Study, a large-scale, nationally representative UK study. We track the...

What are the impacts on household incomes of the major economic downturn that occurred in almost all OECD countries starting in late 2007? This paper is a condensed version of a public lecture given at the University of Melbourne in honour of R. I. Downing. It draws on a study of 21 rich...

This study investigates the role of parental socialization and children’s agency in the formation of sex-typed occupational preferences using data for British children aged between 11 and 15. We anchor agency in observable psychological attributes associated with children's capacity to...

I present new evidence on the incidence and wage associations of over-education among migrants to the UK from the ‘A8’ EU accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe from 2004-2011. Using the Labour Force Survey, I employ a novel strategy to maximise the number of migrants...

A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. This has caught the attention of Western policymakers, who want to know why East Asian children obtain such high PISA scores, and what can be done to...

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are two highly respected cross-national studies of pupil achievement. These have been specifically designed to study how different countries' educational systems are...

This paper uses data from a rich UK birth cohort to estimate the differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between children born at the start and end of the academic year. It builds on the previous literature on this topic in England by using a more robust regression discontinuity design...

This paper examines the effects of "child-friendly" practices on learning in rural India. These are a set of pedagogical practices intended to improve education outcomes by increasing children’s inclusion in their learning environment. They are widely promoted in international development...