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Home ownership is the largest component of wealth for most households and its intergenerational transmission underpins the production and reproduction of economic inequalities across generations. Yet, little is currently known about ethnic differences in the intergenerational transmission of housing tenure. In this paper we use linked Census data covering 1971-2011 to document rates of intergenerational housing tenure mobility across ethnic groups in England and Wales. We find that while home ownership declined across all ethnic groups during this period, there were substantial differences between them. Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi households experienced the strongest intergenerational link between parent and child housing tenure, and Black individuals had the highest rates of downward housing mobility. In contrast, those of Indian origin had homeownership rates similar to White British families, and a weaker link between parent and child housing tenure. These patterns are likely to exacerbate existing gradients in other dimensions of ethnicity-based inequality, now and in the future. Juli 2023

Using a large and novel administrative dataset, this paper investigates variation in returnsto different higher education 'degrees' (subject-institution combinations) in the United King-dom. Conditioning on a rich set background characteristics, it finds substantial variation inreturns, even within subject, across universities with very similar selectivity levels, suggest-ing degree choices matter a lot for later-life earnings. Selectivity is weakly related to returnsthrough most of the distribution but strongly positively correlated at the top end. Other thanselectivity, returns are poorly correlated with observable degree characteristics, which has im-plications for student choices and the incentives of universities.

In this paper we use linked census data to assess whether an academically selective schooling system promotes social mobility, using England as a case study. Over a period of two decades, the share of pupils in academically selective schools in England declined sharply and differentially by area. Using a sample of census records matched to administrative data on selective system schooling within local areas, we exploit temporal and geographic variation to estimate the effects of the selective schooling system on absolute and relative social class mobility. Our results provide no support for the contention that the selective schooling system increased social mobility in England, whether considered in absolute or relative terms. The findings are precisely estimated and robust to a comprehensive battery of robustness checks.

Social mobility—the extent to which social and economic position in adulthood is facilitated or constrained by family origins—has taken an increasingly prominent role in public and policy discourse. Recent studies have documented that not only who your parents are, but also where you grow up, influences subsequent life chances. We bring these two concepts together to study trends in social mobility in England and Wales, in three post-war generations, using linked Decennial Census data. We estimate rates of occupational social class mobility by sex and region of origin. Our findings show considerable spatial variation in rates of absolute and relative mobility as well as how these have changed over time. While rates of upward mobility increased in every region between the mid-1950s and the early 1980s, this upward shift varied across different parts of the country, and tailed off for more recent cohorts. We also explore the role of domestic migration in understanding these temporal and spatial patterns, finding that those who stayed in their region of origin had lower rates of upward mobility compared to those who moved out, although this difference also narrowed over time. While policy discussion has focused almost entirely on national-level trends in social mobility, our results emphasise the need to also consider persistent spatial inequalities.

Using German register data for the period between 1970 and 2010, this paper studies the labor market consequences of being born during the German food crisis after World War II. The paper finds that those born during the first half of 1946---about nine months after the period of most severe malnutrition---have significantly lower earnings than those born shortly before and after. The effect persists throughout their entire labor market careers, so that their total earnings losses accumulate to about one and a half year of average annual earnings. In addition, those affected by the malnutrition early in life have lower employment prospects and retire earlier. The paper provides novel insights to better understand how nutritional conditions early in life influence economic outcomes over the entire life course.

This paper re-examines the wage returns to the 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age (RoSLA) in England and Wales using a high-quality administrative panel dataset covering the relevant cohorts for almost 40 years of their labour market careers. With best practice regression discontinuity methods we find at best a zero return to the additional education for men. However, we contend that regression discontinuity methods in this context will give unreliable estimates of the return. Using the panel data to correct for this we find a local average treatment effect of 7% over the lifetime for this additional year of education.

This paper re-examines the wage returns to the 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age (RoSLA) in England and Wales using a high-quality administrative panel dataset covering the relevant cohorts for almost 40 years of their labour market careers. With best practice regression discontinuity methods we find at best a zero return to the additional education for men. However, we contend that regression discontinuity methods in this context will give unreliable estimates of the return. Using the panel data to correct for this we find a local average treatment effect of 7% over the lifetime for this additional year of education.

Reforms which increase the stock of education in a society have long been held by policy-makers as key to improving rates of intergenerational social mobility. Yet, despite the intuitive plausibility of this idea, the empirical evidence in support of an effect of educational expansion on social fluidity is both indirect and weak. In this paper we use the raising of the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16 years in England and Wales in 1972 to estimate the effect of educational participation and qualification attainment on rates of intergenerational social class mobility. Because, in expectation, children born immediately before and after the policy was implemented are statistically exchangeable, the difference in the amount of education they received may be treated as exogenously determined. The exogenous nature of the additional education gain means that differences in rates of social mobility between cohorts affected by the reform can be treated as having been caused by the additional education. The data for the analysis come from the ONS Longitudinal Study, which links individual records from successive decennial censuses between 1971 and 2001. Our findings show that, although the reform resulted in an increase in educational attainment in the population as a whole and a weakening of the association between attainment and class origin, there was no reliably discernible increase in the rate of intergenerational social mobility.