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This paper summarises the output of a Nuffield-funded research project exploring inequalities in three aspects of children’s experience in early education in England. The main focus of the project was on ‘peer effects’ in pre-school settings: we examine the extent of clustering by income and language background and explore associations between pre-school peer group and children’s outcomes in early primary school. The report also presents findings on access to the full duration of the free entitlement to early education, and on variation in children’s experience of the transition onward to reception class. We find much lower levels of clustering in pre-schools in England than have been identified in studies for the US, particularly by income, and little evidence that pre-school peer group is related to early school attainment as assessed by teachers in reception and Year 2. But we identify significant levels of non-take-up of the full entitlement, particularly among disadvantaged groups. A higher prevalence in the local authority of some types of pre-school appears to make a difference: more voluntary sector or Sure Start provision is associated with higher take-up, while more Sure Start provision is further associated with lower inequalities in access between different groups. We also find disparities in the stability of transitions to reception class. In the cohort we examine, children from lowincome backgrounds and some minority ethnic groups are much more likely to experience the most secure transition – from a school nursery class to a reception class in the same school, with high numbers of known peers – because they are more likely to be in school nurseries to begin with. But among those attending school nurseries, some groups, including Black Caribbean children and those with a statement of special educational needs, are significantly less likely than others to continue to reception in that school. The disparity is of potential concern given wider disadvantages facing these groups of children.

Explores factors associated with low-income families’ lesser take-up of free ‘universal’ pre-schooling. The income-gap is smaller in areas with more state-maintained rather than private sector provision. Predominance of Sure Start is associated with longer access for all children, low and higher-income, and related to a reduced income-gap.

This report provides an update to Does Money Affect Children’s Outcomes?: A Systematic Review, published in October 2013. Using systematic search approaches, we review the literature examining the relationship between household financial resources and children’s outcomes, focusing on OECD countries and on the last fifty years. We include studies looking at children’s health, cognitive development and social, emotional and behavioural development, as well as studies on relevant intermediate outcomes, including the home environment and maternal mental health and health behaviours. Studies are only included if they use methods that allow us to reach conclusions about causal relationships: this includes randomised controlled experiments, quasi-experimental situations, and longitudinal studies tracking both financial resources and outcomes over time. The update adds 27 new studies to the 34 in the original review, and slightly expands the country coverage, although the evidence base remains heavily US-focused. The studies provide strong evidence that income has causal effects on a wide range of children’s outcomes, especially in households on low incomes to begin with. We conclude that reducing income poverty can be expected to have a significant impact on children’s environment and on their development.

This paper examines responses to a 2012-13 government consultation on child poverty measurement. It explores what these responses tell us about attitudes towards the child poverty indicators in the Child Poverty Act 2010, and about the extent of support for a broader approach to measurement. The study was motivated by the amendments to the Child Poverty Act put forward by the Conservative Government in 2015. Using a Freedom of Information request, we gained access to 251 of the 257 consultation responses, which came from individuals and organisations with a wide range of expertise, including academics, local authorities, frontline services and children’s charities. Our analysis finds strong support for the original suite of measures and near universal support for keeping income at the heart of poverty measurement; poverty is understood primarily to be a relative lack of material resources, with income widely believed to be the best proxy measure. While there is considerable support for capturing information around other dimensions, these are generally seen as causes or consequences of poverty, or as broader life chance measures, not as measures of child poverty itself. The paper also considers the government’s published summary of the consultation responses, and discusses differences between the government’s interpretation and our own.

This report examines whether money has a causal impact on children’s outcomes. There is abundant evidence that children growing up in lower income households do less well than their peers on a range of wider outcomes, including measures of health and education. But is money important in itself, or do these associations simply reflect other differences between richer and poorer households, such as levels of parental education or attitudes towards parenting? Children in low-income households do less well than their better-off peers on many outcomes in life, such as education or health, simply because they are poorer. While a parent's level of education, attitude towards bringing up children and other parental factors also have a bearing, research shows that having more money directly improves the development and level of achievement of children. Increases in family income substantially reduce differences in schooling outcomes and improve wider aspects of a child’s well-being. Cognitive development and school achievement were most improved by having more money. Conversely, reductions in family income, including benefit cuts, are likely to have wide-ranging negative effects. Money seems to have more of an effect among low-income families.

When Labour came to power in 1997 it made commitments to reduce poverty and improve children’s health, education and wider life chances. Early childhood was considered central to the strategy, and considerable resources were invested in very young children. This paper examines the main policies introduced affecting children under five, including longer maternity leave, Sure Start Children’s Centres, free early education for all three and four year olds, more affordable and higher quality childcare, and more generous financial support for families with children, both in and out of work. The paper draws on government statistics and evaluations as well as wider evidence from a range of independent sources to examine where increased spending went, and with what impact. Children’s outcomes improved on a range of measures during this period. Child poverty fell from one in three to one in four in households with a youngest child under five. Low birthweight and infant mortality rates (IMR) fell, and Foundation Stage Profile results improved. In all three measures gaps between different social groups narrowed. Research evaluations, where available, point to small but significant effects of particular policies, including Sure Start, the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative and the Graduate Leader Fund. However, in the absence of more widespread evidence from evaluations it is difficult to attribute changes in outcomes directly to changes in policy. The paper discusses these challenges and considers a series of ‘tests’ of Labour’s impact, including whether improvements represent a change in a longer-term trend, and, where possible, how outcomes compare in international terms.

This is the first major report in a wider programme assessing the impact of the recession, government policy reforms and public spending on poverty and inequality in the UK. Later work will assess the Coalition’s social policy record, in the very different economic and fiscal climate of 2010-2014. As a baseline, this paper looks at what Labour did, at what cost, and with what impact on people’s lives.

This CASEbrief summarises findings from a research project, 'The childcare puzzle: how can we improve both quality and affordability?'

This paper examines how the quality of formal early childhood education and care is associated with children’s background. By using different indicators of quality, the research also explored how the relationship varies depending on the way quality is measured. The analysis combines information from three administrative datasets – the Early Years Census, the Schools Census and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) dataset on inspections (2010-11). The results suggest that children from disadvantaged background have access to better qualified staff. However, services catering for more disadvantaged children are more segregated and receive poorer quality ratings from Ofsted, the national inspectorate.

This CASEbrief reports on the findings of recent research examining the employment pathways followed by mothers entering low-skilled work. The project was originally framed under a Labour Government which placed considerable emphasis on encouraging women back into work when their children were relatively young (pre-school age), first through tax credits and childcare subsidies and subsequently with greater compulsion. A central justification underlying the provision of greater financial support to mothers in employment than to those staying at home was the assumption – frequently expressed in government documents – that even a low-skilled job was a stepping-stone to improved prospects, with a long-run pay-off both for mothers and for the Treasury. We wanted to know how justified this assumption was: how often did mothers’ low-skilled work result in stable employment and progression up the earnings distribution out of low pay?

Maternal employment formed a central plank in the former Labour Government’s strategy to reduce child poverty. Even where potential jobs were low-skilled and low-paid, policy was explicitly work (rather than training) first, and lone parents in particular were given direct and indirect financial subsidies to enter employment of any kind. The explicit assumption was that a low-paid job would be a stepping-stone to better things. From 2008 a little more stick was introduced to what had been a largely carrot-based approach to encouraging employment, a shift that has continued under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government in power from May 2010. However, there is little evidence in practice that a low-paid job when one’s child is young is a reliable route to improved future prospects. This paper uses the British Household Panel Survey to explore this issue further. It examines the employment trajectories of 929 women for the ten years after the birth of their youngest child, asking two main questions. Do mothers tend to remain in employment once they have taken a job? And do wages and other employment outcomes further down the line (when their youngest child is ten) reflect the employment pathway taken? In both cases the paper focuses in particular on differences between women with higher and lower levels of qualifications. The paper finds mothers following a variety of employment pathways, with instability much more common than steady work trajectories. One in three mothers moves in and out of work over the decade after the birth of their youngest child, and this is true for both lower-skilled and higher-skilled mothers. Stable work histories do appear to carry benefits in terms of wages when the youngest reaches ten, but the benefits are substantially higher for women with higher levels of qualifications, as might be predicted by human capital theory. More highly qualified women who moved in and out of work over the decade had an hourly wage at ten which was 33% lower than similar women with a stable work history; for women with few or no qualifications the corresponding figure was 14%. Levels of occupational progression as measured by change in NS-SEC status over the decade were encouraging, but for both higher and lower skilled women job satisfaction when the youngest is ten appears unrelated to the pathway taken.

This paper uses panel data from the British Families and Children Study to analyse the employment patterns of women with children and the ways in which part-time work and interruptions in paid employment influence the wages of working mothers. It pays particular attention to how the relationship between employment trajectory and wage progression compares for higher-skilled and lower-skilled mothers and for mothers of younger and older children. We find that mothers follow a wide variety of employment pathways, the majority working part-time, moving between full-time and part-time employment or moving in and out of work as they combine motherhood with paid employment. In support of results from existing research on the “part-time” wage penalty and the “motherhood gap”, we find that there are wage penalties associated with unstable work trajectories. Our analysis also shows that such wage penalties are significantly smaller for lower-skilled than higher-skilled women and are experienced by mothers of children of all ages, although the impact appears larger for mothers of younger children. In the final sections, the paper discusses the policy implications that arise from these findings with reference to recent debates on maternal employment, wage progression and poverty reduction.

Recent government pronouncements in the UK and above all the recent Conservative Party (2008) policy document on welfare reform suggest that US welfare reform is increasingly being taken as a model for the UK. What lessons should the UK draw from US experience? The long established means tested programme for needy families known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was replaced in 1996 with a welfare to work programme known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The historical background and features of the new program are elaborated and the way it has been implemented in varied ways in different states is documented. The findings of a number of outcome studies assessing the programme’s impact and effectiveness are reviewed. Three commentaries on the paper consider how far American experience should be a guide to welfare policy in Britain. With commentaries by Kitty Stewart, David Piachaud and Howard Glennerster

The Lisbon summit of the European Council in March 2000 declared the number of people living in poverty and social exclusion in the European Union to be unacceptable, and called for steps to tackle the issue, beginning with the setting of targets for particular indicators. The targets suggested have been broad in nature but have largely concentrated on national averages. This paper seeks to marry this approach with the EU¿s traditional focus on regional cohesion, by developing regional indicators of well-being and exclusion for EU countries. It draws on a range of sources to put together indicators in five dimensions of well-being: material well-being, health, education and participation in two spheres ¿ productive and social. It explores, first, how far national indicators disguise geographical inequalities in these different dimensions; and second, the extent to which regional performance differs according to which dimension is being examined. At the same time, the paper draws attention to the limits of currently available data, in light of the fact that one key aspect of the Lisbon summit conclusions was a commitment to the collection of better data on poverty and social exclusion in the EU.