Is the Well-being of Children Converging in the European Union?

Recent discussion of convergence in the European Union has focused on macroeconomic indicators, in line with requirements for participation in the single currency. But it is reduction of disparities in living standards that is an ultimate goal of European integration – the greater 'economic and social cohesion' emphasised by the Treaty on Union. We assemble evidence on whether the well-being of children in Member States has been converging over the last two decades, taking a variety of indicators: poverty, household worklessness, youth unemployment, child mortality, youth suicide, educational enrolment, teenage fertility, and self-reported 'life satisfaction'.     

Unemployment assistance in Hungary

Low outflow rates from unemployment and cuts in benefit entitlement periods resulted in sharp reductions in the coverage by Unemployment Insurance of the unemployed stock in Central and Eastern European countries during the 1990s. From mid-1994 in Hungary the most common benefit received by the registered unemployed stock is means-tested Unemployment Assistance (UA) but so far very little is known about its receipt. In the paper, using microdata from the unemployment register we investigate the operation of the UA scheme in Hungary, including the benefit levels, the characteristics of benefit recipients and the determinants of flows to and from receipt.     

What Can Child Anthropometry Reveal About Living Standards and Public Policy? An Illustration from Central Asia

The paper considers the case for the use of data on weight and height of children to assess living standards and public policy, contrasting them with monetized measures of welfare based on household incomes or expenditures. Data on child anthropometry are then used from Uzbekistan, the most populous of the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, to investigate rural–urban differences in living standards, the impact of kindergartens on nutritional status, and the targeting of means-tested social assistance. Conclusions are drawn for the use of information on child anthropometry in the design of public policy.     

Tony Atkinson and his Legacy

Tony Atkinson is universally celebrated for his outstanding contributions to the measurement and analysis of inequality, but he never saw the study of inequality as a separate branch of economics. He was an economist in the classical sense, rejecting any sub‐field labelling of his interests and expertise, and he made contributions right across economics. His death on 1 January 2017 deprived the world of both an intellectual giant and a deeply committed public servant in the broadest sense of the term. This collective tribute highlights the range, depth and importance of Tony's enormous legacy, the product of almost fifty years’ work.     

Education, inequality and transition

I consider evidence on differences in access to education and in learning achievement within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The situation inherited from the communist period is first summarized: there were some significant disparities with, for example, family background having a strong association with tertiary enrolments, as in Western countries. Analysis of the transition period focuses on differences in access and achievement associated with household income and geographic location. Disparities are not the same across the region; in some countries, such as Russia, there are clear grounds for serious concern, but it is unlikely that any country has cause for complacency.     

The effect of monitoring unemployment insurance recipients on unemployment duration: Evidence from a field experiment

Programme administration is a relatively neglected issue in the analysis of disincentive effects of unemployment benefit systems. We investigate this issue with a field experiment in Hungary involving random assignment of benefit claimants to treatment and control groups. Treatment increases the monitoring of claims — claimants make more frequent visits to the employment office and face questioning about their search behaviour. Treatment has quite a large effect on durations on benefit of women aged 30 and over, while we find no effect for younger women or men.     

In-school labour supply,parental transfers,and wages

In many industrialised countries, teenagers have a significant spending power, and they are important customers for specialised industries. The income of teenagers still in full time education comes from two major sources: parental pocket money and earnings from part-time jobs. Little is known about the way these sources interact, and how they depend on parental, school and family characteristics. In this paper, we analyse labour supply of 16 year old British teenagers together with the cash transfers made to them by their parents. We first develop a theoretical model, where labour supply and transfers are jointly determined. We then estimate labour supply and transfers jointly, using unique data on labour supply of teenagers, the wages they receive, and the transfers from their parents. We show how these two processes depend on each other, and how transfers and labour supply react to changes in wages. We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for financial support for this research, which has also benefited from support to the IFS as a Designated Research Centre of the ESRC. We thank Murali Agastya, Richard Blundell, Ian Preston, Frank Windmeijer, and two anonymous referees and the editor Bernd Fitzenberger for useful comments.     

Unofficial Development Assistance: A Model of Development Charities’ Donation Income

The empirical literature on the determinants of charities’ donation income, distinguishing the charitable cause, is small. We consider the case of development charities specifically. Using a panel covering a quarter of a century, we observe a strong fundraising effect and a unitary household income elasticity. We find evidence that the conventionally identified ‘price’ effect may simply be the product of omitted variable bias. Our results further suggest that public spending on development crowds in private donations for development. We find a positive spillover effect of fundraising, suggesting the efforts of one development charity may increase contributions to other development charities.