School closures have been one of the widest-spread and, in some countries, longest-lasting policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, having a profound impact on families. We know from our own previous research that school closures had a significant negative effect on children’s behavioural and emotional difficulties, and that this effect persisted even once all […]

This thesis contains three essays that analyses income inequality and poverty. Chapter 1 examines the impact of education on income inequality in 18 Latin American countries between 2000 and 2010. This period has raised interest in the academic community because inequality has fallen across the region, after several years of consistent high levels. Employing […]

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK labour market has been extremely heterogeneous, with strong variation both by occupation and industrial sector. The extent to which workers adjust their job search behaviour in response to this reallocation of employment has an important bearing on the future course of the labour market. At […]

[…] motherhood change peoples preferences? We study whether the experience of employment during motherhood exerts an effect on attitudes towards gender norms, and more specifically, attitudes towards the impact of women’s employment on children’s wellbeing (which proxy traditional gender attitudes). Drawing on a large, representative and longitudinal data and an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that […]

[…] the bottom of the distribution, and their effect on poverty and inequality largely depends on the generosity of the benefits implemented. By contrast, automatic stabilisers mitigate the impact of the income shock at the top of the distribution due to the effect of social insurance contributions and personal income tax, whereas social assistance programmes […]

Using UKMOD, the UK tax-benefit microsimulation model, we analyse the impact on Londoners of the Covid-19 crisis, of the emergency policies put in place since March 2020 and of some counterfactual policy options, including the continuation of the £20 weekly uplift in Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit. Our main results can be summarised […]