DIAL

Dynamics of Inequality Across the Lifecourse (DIAL)
DIAL

Tuning into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse

  1. 05/07/2022

    How does economic disadvantage accumulate for single mothers?

    In Episode 7 of Series 2 of our podcast we talk with Professor Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol and PI of DIAL's EQUAL LIVES project about how economic disadvantage accumulates for single mothers and the impacts on their income and risk of poverty of having a child and splitting up from a partner. The Accumulation of Economic Disadvantage: The Influence of Childbirth and Divorce on the Income and Poverty Risk of Single Mothers is research by Professor Susan Harkness of the University of Bristol and is published in Demography.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00 Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In this series, we discuss emerging findings from DIAL's Equal Lives project. Our guest today is Professor Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol and PI of Equal Lives. She's been looking at how economic disadvantage accumulates for single mothers, and the impacts on their income and risk of poverty of having a child and splitting up from a partner. I started by asking her about the background to her research. Susan Harkness  0:28  I think for a long time, there's been an assumption that single mothers are more likely to be poor or living in low income because they're not living with a male breadwinning partner. And I think one of the things that's been much less well recognised is that in the US, but also elsewhere, single mothers are much more likely to be poor than single fathers and I think one of the reasons for this is not just that they don't live with a partner, but also because they face an enormous economic hit because of motherhood. And I think the motherhood penalty. We know, we know it exists. We know mothers are much less likely to work than fathers. And when they do work, that they're more likely to be paid less. And what I wanted to do was try and connect to this research with research from single parenthood to see what the impact on single mothers' incomes was. Christine Garrington  1:16  So what was it here that you wanted to look at specifically and why then?   Susan Harkness  1:21  Okay, so I wanted to think about why single mothers were more likely to have low income so what was the penalty to single motherhood? And in doing that, I wanted to think about single motherhood is a process that sort of evolves over the life cycle. So first of all, we know that mothers when they have children, they face this economic penalty in the labour market, and then when they separate, they're left in this very vulnerable position because their employment earnings have just declined so much. Christine Garrington  1:49 And for this research, where did you get your information from? And can you tell us sort of why it is a good source for for looking at these particular issues?  Susan Harkness  1:58  Yes, so we looked at data from the Panel Study for Income Dynamics and it's a great source of data because it allows us to look at people over time. In the case of our study, we've followed them for over 10 years, since becoming mothers to look at what happened to their incomes around these kind of critical lifecourse transitions. One of the great advantages of it is that we can see how people were doing before they became single mothers and we can see how they were doing after and then we can kind of look at how each of these different life course events - motherhood, partnership dissolution - leads to changes in their economic circumstances. Another major advantage of this data is that it's got a really large sample size, and therefore we can think a bit more also about the heterogeneity the experience of single mothers. And what we mean here is that we can think about whether all single mothers effectively look the same or whether different routes into single motherhood have a different impact on their incomes. So what we did in this particular case was think about how single mothers differ according to whether they were previously married. They were previously cohabiting, or indeed they were married at the time at which they had a child. And this is a group which is accounting for a sort of growing share of births in the US and indeed in the UK over time. Christine Garrington  3:18  Right now you started by comparing the incomes of single, cohabiting and married mothers, what did you, what did you actually see there? Susan Harkness  3:26 So one thing that we see is, is I think fairly fairly well known but we know that for example, married mothers start from a position of having higher incomes than cohabiting mothers and single mothers. So there's an income gradient with cohabiting mothers sitting somewhere in the middle. But what we also know is that the, the income composition of those families is quite different. So whilst in single mother families, women are indeed largely dependent on their own earnings, and to some extent on benefit receipts, in cohabiting and married mother families, there's a much greater dependence of women on partner's earnings. And indeed if you look at the earnings, of women within those different family types, they're actually relatively similar. Married and cohabiting mothers tend to be more dependent on partners, whereas single mothers tend to be more dependent on their own earnings and on the state.  Christine Garrington  4:22 Yeah, right - so what was the earnings impact of divorce or separation for each of these groups and were they larger for some than, than others? Susan Harkness  4:29 Okay, so one of the things that we thought was really interesting is that if we look at what happens to women's own earnings following the birth of a child, the biggest negative effect was for women who were previously married. So we're not looking at wage effects specifically we're looking at the combined effect of changes in wages and changes in working hours and indeed participation. What we see is that for married mothers, we find much greater reduction in self-sufficiency or increased economic dependence as a result of childbirth, amongst cohabiting mothers, among single mothers, we see a smaller earnings effect, so earnings declined by less. And what happens then if we look at the income within those families, is that if we consider what happens to the income of married mother families? In fact, what we find is that although earnings fall quite substantially amongst married mothers, these are compensated for by increases in fathers' earnings who to tend to work longer hours and work more often when they have a child and therefore the overall impact on income is relatively small, whereas in single mother families, the birth of the child is associated with the fall in earnings and a really large impact on overall income. Christine Garrington  5:42 Okay, and you also considered how the loss of a male partner’s income affected these separated and divorced mothers, what did you see there? Susan Harkness  5:49 So what we see for the loss of a partner's earnings is of course, married mothers tend to be partner to higher earning men and men who work more following the birth of a child and so when the partner leaves, we have a larger negative effect on their overall incomes. And part of this is because of the reduction in these married mothers’ own earnings following childbirth. And part of the reason for that is that the, they have, they have farther, further to fall. So the, the loss of father's earnings fall this is somewhat greater. Christine Garrington 6:19 Yeah, so quite a lot of information there. What do we learn from all of this? That's new, Susan? Susan Harkness  6:24 If we think about what happens within married couples, I think because marriage sort of provides some security, is thought to provide some security for those who have children that we tend to see greater levels of specialisation within those households. What this means is that women see their earnings fall farther than cohabiting are single mothers, and it becomes harder for them to recover those earnings should they, should they separate so the overall impact should they become single mothers on their own labour market income is greater than for these other family types. And what does this mean? It means that actually the separation from marriage tends to have worse consequences than it does if you become a single mother through separation from cohabitation or divorce. Whilst you might think, for example, that maintenance might help offset some of these costs associated with divorce. In fact, this is often not really, not really the case because the levels of maintenance payments are relatively small. What we find is actually that single parenthood, regardless of the route in by which you become a single mother, is really quite a leveller and women who were better off before see the largest falls in their income. Christine Garrington 7:42 Okay, there was one other aspect of your research that really caught my eye and this was, these were your findings around what things are like for single moms who are living with parents. These are quite interesting, weren't they? Susan Harkness  7:51 Oh, I think this is, this is fascinating. So one of the things that I think increasing research is looking at is how, how single mothers maintain those sort of standard of, standard of living, when they're not able to rely on their own earnings or indeed on the state. And we know that in the US around one in 10 single mothers are living with their own parents. And in in this study, we find that actually living with your own parents is a really important mechanism for boosting families' income. And in fact, living with your own parents provides as much protection for household income as being married and a little more than if you find a new partner, for example. So it's really, really important living with grandparents is a really important route to kind of maintaining your standard of living f

    12 min

  2. 02/05/2022

    The dynamics of inequality: what have we learned?

    In the final episode of the DIAL podcast we’re looking at what’s been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives and what its longer term consequences might be. We're joined by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen from the University of Turku in Finland. Elina is the Scientific Coordinator for DIAL and, as the programme draws to a close she reflects on some of the programme’s highlights,  key findings and implications for the future.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this final episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, from the University of Turku in Finland. Elina is the scientific co-ordinator for DIAL and today, as the programme draws to a close, she's here to reflect on some of the program's highlights, key findings and implications for the future. So welcome, Elina thank you very much indeed, for joining us. Now, first of all, I'm guessing it's been no mean feat and indeed, I know, it's been no mean feat, keeping an eye across 13 fantastic research projects with researchers based all over Europe. But just take a minute or two, if you would to remind us of what exactly the DIAL programme is and what it's involved over the last few years. Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  0:57  So thanks a lot, Chris. The DIAL programme is, as you said, kind of transnational programme. And we've had 13 research projects involved. And all of those involve international collaboration. And it's based in the social sciences and behavioural sciences, financed by NORFACE, which is a research organisation bringing together different funding institutes across Europe. And so the focus of DIAL has been on inequality and in particular inequality across the life course and trying to understand some of the structures of inequality cross nationally and some of the mechanisms kind of producing inequality and and what that means to people and societies as a whole. Christine Garrington  1:41  Wonder if I can ask you why it has been so important to look not just at inequality, per se, as you were saying there, but at how inequality manifests itself over the life course, because this is an important thing, isn't it? And indeed how, when and where it sort of accumulates? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  1:57  Inequality is a really complex and multifaceted issue. And so I think one one part of it is that inequality comes across in many different domains. So it's important to take into account inequalities, for example, in education, labour market, health, and so on. And then I mean, to really understand where it comes from and what it means it's important to look at the determinants across time, I mean, both across time for an individual and their parents, and so on, kind of that life course aspect, but also, for countries to see how it develops across time. Inequality isn't something that just is, I mean, it develops. And so kind of building on that kind of developmental process to really kind of inform us about how we can do something about it, or how we can really kind of understand where it comes from, it's important to take that into account. Christine Garrington  2:58  Now, you talked about the programme largely being based in the social sciences. But one of the key things about the project is that we've seen researchers from different disciplines as well as different countries coming together to try to tackle, as you say, as you rightly say, this incredibly complex area around inequality, what's been the thinking there? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  3:20  Well, I mean, inequality is something that interests a lot of academics working in different disciplines. And, and they come from it from from kind of different angles. And I think, because it is kind of a complex issue, and it's an issue that kind of manifests itself in different ways. So really building on on the strengths of different disciplines, I think is a key key strength here. So we don't only look at inequality in one domain, for example, say, say something like education, which would then be kind of a subset of disciplines that tend to be interested in inequality in education, but also how education is linked to inequalities in in other aspects and, and in addition to the kind of different domains that come from different disciplines, also, the ways in which we, we analyse it and building on the strengths and knowledge of different disciplines. I think is key here, key to, to just building a comprehensive picture and learning from each other, as well as as then taking that knowledge forward. Christine Garrington  4:34  It would be remiss of us not to talk about COVID. And in some ways, it was something of a setback for plans to to stage events and meetings around the the programme of research to get the word out there about it. But it also provided in some respects, a rather unexpected opportunity, didn't it to use the programme to look at inequality in the context of COVID. So, so tell us a bit about that. Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  4:58  Yeah, so obviously the research programme began before COVID. And so the projects had their their kind of plans of what they wanted to do and the analysis that they were going to do. But given this massive impact that COVID had on on society and and on inequality as well. A lot of projects then decided that this would be a really important aspect to look at and an opportunity also to learn about inequality in a changing societal context. So different projects have taken this into account in different ways. But for example, there's been kind of really important work on on just what happened to inequality for example, due to lock down and and the economic upheaval of COVID, not just the health implications, but then also using that upheaval, to think about how inequalities might be changed. And for example, so work by Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez, Suzanne Harkness and Anette Fasang, looking at what happened to housework, during COVID. People were having to stay at home, both parents and children and seeing what happens to inequalities between men and women. And how the, the the number and age of children influences that and kind of what they saw was that obviously, this change in in family habits changed house work habits, but at the same time, when locked down ended a lot of couples returned to normal. So so even though there was a massive shift, and and people behaved differently for a short period of time, we can see that these kind of entrenched habits, then then go back to normal quite quickly. Christine Garrington  6:43  Yeah, really interesting piece of work that so. And also, despite COVID, you were able to, nevertheless, to involve a great number of stakeholders in in the research, what messages did you receive from them, I wonder about what was emerging? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  6:58  So yeah, we've had some really interesting discussions with stakeholders, both policymakers and then kind of non-governmental organisations involved in both practical work and lobbying as well. And they've been really interested in in the work that we're doing. So in particular, we've talked to stakeholders involved in kind of gender inequality work, and how participation in the labour market is unequal between men and women, and in particular, between mothers and fathers. And then we've also talked a lot to stakeholders involved in kind of childhood disadvantages, and how different types of children are put at a disadvantage. And what are some of the mechanisms kind of potentially either alleviating those disadvantages, or that are currently making those disadvantages larger, and that would kind of be important to look at. So we've kind of talked both about the the bigger picture of inequality, but also some of the mechanisms and obviously, stakeholders are, are often interested in what they can do. And then we've also had really good discussions about especially with policymakers also about the kinds of data that going forward, would be needed to, to kind of really analyse these things further. And I think there's a lot of kind of shared interest in collecting data or making administrative data available for researchers to be able to address inequalities in the future. Christine Garrington  8:28  Yeah, now a major part of your role, Elina has been to pull together all of these different strands of work in some way to ensure that we get to a, what we hope is a coherent picture of what's been learned from the programme as a whole. And I wonder whether it's possible in the short period of time that we have to say what has been learned from the programme as a whole? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  8:48  Well, that's no mean feat. To then kind of say what's been learned because I think there's such richness in the research coming through and I mean, we've only kind of touched upon some of the aspects just now. And so we what we've been trying to do is, is bring together kind of thematically, things we've learnt in terms of, for example, gender inequalities, as I just mentioned. So So really looking at further at kind of motherhood, penalties and how, how those might be potentially for example, by by further training ameliorated although at the same time, we need to remember that women tend to nowadays have higher education levels than men. So education isn't always the key here. So also looking at kind of gender and sexual minorities, even though we've been making progress in terms of legislation and policy. The discrimination can still be kind of an ongoing issue for people and and kind of the legacy of the past is still a major issue for for LGBT citizens across Europe and even though legislation has progressed a lot to st

    16 min

  3. 02/05/2022

    A level playing field for children: why it matters in tackling inequality over the lifecourse

    In Episode 5 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast we’re in conversation with Andreas Peichl, Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Finance at the University of Munich and Principal Investigator of a DIAL project looking at the impact of childhood circumstances on individual outcomes over the life-course (IMCHILD).    Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. Today, we're delighted to be joined by Andreas Peichl, Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Finance at the University of Munich, and Principal Investigator of a DIAL project looking at the Impact of Childhood Circumstances on Individual Outcomes over the Life-Course. So, welcome, Andreas, thank you very much for joining us. And I wonder if you can start by telling us a bit about what this project has been investigating and why? Andreas Peichl  0:39  So the project IMCHILD the Impact of Childhood Circumstances on Individual Outcomes over the Life-Course, had the aim to investigate how early decisions that usually parents make for their children's are really at the beginning of life, the early childhood, how these what we call circumstances for the child. So this is something that children typically cannot influence. Because these are decisions by made mostly by parents, how these circumstances affect decisions later in life. So for example, the transition to adulthood, be it educational or occupational choices, family formation, or later labour market outcomes. And the really, the idea was to see whether we find that the early childhood circumstances matter later in life. And then the next question, if this is the case, was what are the causal links? What are the mechanisms for this? And also, what can policymakers do about it if they aim at achieving something like equality of opportunity? So what can policymakers do to to level the playing field, so to say, later in life. Christine Garrington  1:54  Now, I'm interested to know as we record this conversation, COVID is something we certainly seem to be learning to live with right now, although COVID wasn't an issue, when you started this project, it certainly became one. And you've taken time to consider which children have been most affected by school closures for example. Can you tell us a bit about what you found there? Andreas Peichl  2:14  First, what we found is that in any country that we looked at, and especially in Germany, that was the main focus of this part of the analysis, but we also looked at other countries. That low achieving students, so students that were already not doing too well, in school, they were affected the most. And at the same time, students from non academic parents and lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, they were also affected the most. So sometimes, it's a combination of those two factors that are the same children, so low achieving, and low socio-economic status, but it's not exclusive. So, in general, low achieving students and lower socio-economic background, especially non-academic parents, those were the kids that were affected the most by, for example, school closures. But in general, we see that there was a large decrease in learning time for all students in school. And so basically, the whole cohort, were really affected by this. Christine Garrington  3:21  Right and, of course, as we, as we say, as we talked about learning to live with COVID, there are going to be already are, if you like longer term implications of this for children, educators and policymakers who are keen to ensure that any pre-existing inequalities don't become more deeply ingrained. Have I got that right? Andreas Peichl  3:42  Yes. So it's, it's really through it, we need to make sure that these existing inequalities don't become large. And right now, it looks as if they are becoming much larger actually. And we also see that this has long term impact. So if you lose some part of a school year, so for example, if you lose 1/3 of a school year, this, we can find or in the past, this was associated with a drop in lifetime income of 3, 4 or 5%. And so this, this can have huge implications for the generation of students affected. And so it's really important because we will have to live with COVID. And we need to make sure that we don't have to close schools, again, by investing in digital infrastructure and so on and making it possible that even when people are at home or this case, also not only for COVID, but also for other reasons that they can still participate in schooling. So this will be really important. Christine Garrington  4:46  Yes, indeed. Let's move away from COVID. One of the project's key aims was to investigate how the circumstances as we said that a child grows up in influences some of the most important decisions they make later on, you mentioned in your first answer about education and work and all of those key decisions that can take us down a certain path. Tell us a bit more about what you were hoping to get to really sort of get to grips with here. Andreas Peichl  5:13  So the starting point for research is rooted in the philosophical theories of distributive justice. And they, and also from an economic point of view, there's always the question, how to tackle inequalities. And in general, there are three ways to tackle inequalities. One is, the typical way is what we call redistribution. So this is, after all, the labour market outcomes, for example, are observed and we put a taxes and pay transfers and benefits to people to redistribute incomes. But the philosophical question then is, when we do this, how much do we want to redistribute how much inequality in the labour market do we want to have? And we know that for efficiency reasons, it's not good to have perfect equality, because then people don't have incentives to work and or to earn income. But we also know that very extreme inequality is not very good. But we don't know exactly where this optimal level is. But what we know is that there are other inequalities, where it's clear that this is something that we don't want. And this is what we in one paper, we call it unfair inequality, or this is inequality, where it's beyond your control your your poor, because there's something that you cannot influence. And this is what we wanted to investigate in this project. What are these circumstances, that children but also people later in life, have that make them for example, poor or rich? So is it the parental background, or we are in some work, we're also we're looking at the genetic endowment of people, but also other things, the places where you grow up could matter. And then it's important for policymakers, if you start tackling these inequalities already early in life, then maybe you don't need so much redistribution later in life. Because if there's a level playing field, and everybody has the same chances to achieve incomes, then typically inequalities in the labour market will be much less pronounced as they are today. So it was really the aim to see how much of the inequality that we observe today, for example, in labour earnings, labour market outcomes, how much of this can be explained by by early childhood circumstances already? Christine Garrington  7:35  And what were the key things to emerge from the work that you did? Andreas Peichl  7:38  The first thing is that, that we came up with some novel ideas and measures how to exactly measure this, this unfair bit of inequality to really disentangle this, not only in theory, but also empirically and, to some extent, also, using some some novel methods. For example, machine learning and big data ideas, in some ways or another. But also, the other thing was really trying to auto assemble also data, large datasets in paper in Sweden, really looking over several generations to see what is really the, the impact of these childhood circumstances. But what we see is really that childhood matters a lot. I mean, it's not surprising, everybody, I think, if you if you think back of your own childhood, or if you're, if you're having kids, you see how much impact parents can have have on children. And if there's inequality in let's say, how good parents are or how parents treat their children, then it's clear that this will lead to inequalities down the road. And so but I think what what's really interesting in our research was to put numbers on this to really see which inequalities seem to matter more and which maybe to a lesser extent, and then also trying to get at the main mechanisms and sort of the causal links between what it was what is it really that has an impact on on outcomes of children later in life? Christine Garrington  9:15  And you wanted to really sort of dig deep and see how those decisions that we've been talking about translate into later, later life social and economic outcomes, didn't you? What did you see there? Andreas Peichl  9:27  So yeah, we see that it's really that these these childhood circumstances matter in later life so it's, they matter directly in early childhood and then when when kids go to school or to high school, so really educational choices, but also educational performance is affected by these early childhood circumstances and then it continues, it's it's occupational choices, that matter it's but it's also we see impact on family formation - when to marry when to have children be it earlier or later in life, this is affected. And it matters for for labour market outcomes for career aspirations for, and then for for which jobs for which incomes people earn and so on. So it really matters all the way. We're also still working on projects to see whether it matters for early retirement decisions, for example, in general

    18 min

  4. 29/04/2022

    Pre-term children: how do they get an equal chance to thrive?

    In Episode 4 of Series 4 we're talking to Professor Sakari Lemola from the University of Bielefeld and formerly from the University of Warwick. Sakari is one of the Principal Investigators of the DIAL project PremLife, which has been looking at what factors can provide protection and increase resilience for preterm children’s life course outcomes.  Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this episode, we're delighted to be joined by Professor Sakari Lemola. He's from the University of Bielefeld and formally from the University of Warwick, and one of the Principal Investigators of the DIAL project, PremLife, which has been looking at what factors can provide protection and increase resilience for preterm children's life course outcomes. So Sakari, thank-you so much for joining us today. It's great to have you on the DIAL podcast. I wonder if you can start by telling us a bit more specifically what this project has been investigating and why? Sakari Lemola  0:45  So the PremLife project has been particularly focused on the role of protective factors for social and educational transitions after preterm birth. Preterm birth is defined as birth before the 37th gestational week. Then there are two further categories one distinguishes between moderately to late preterm children at its birth between the 32nd and 36th gestational week - moderately and late preterm children. But they're also very preterm children who are born before the 32nd gestational week. So in the PremLife project, we specifically look at both of these groups - the very preterm children and moderately and late preterm children compared to term born children and try to figure out what are their disadvantages they have in their lives? And also, what are protective factors that may improve their outcomes? In some domains they actually do really well when certain protective factors are present. Christine Garrington  1:50  Can you tell us something about how common preterm births are? Sakari Lemola  1:54  The incidence of preterm birth has been rising in the last few decades. So in the UK, around 7% of all babies are born preterm each year. This means that two children in an average sized primary school class are likely to have been born preterm and in spite of the advances in neonatal care of preterm birth in the last few decades, and also decreasing mortality rates, which is a very good thing. Negative long term, sequels and consequences of preterm birth have still remained, particularly for very preterm children, those born before the 32nd gestational week that means eight weeks too early or even earlier than that. That leads to medical complications, which often require distressing but life saving treatments frequent are, for instance, neonatal asphyxia, hypoxia due to immature lungs. Necessary treatment involves ventilation, continuous positive airway pressure, surfactant treatment, but also treatment with stress hormones, prenatal corticosteroids treatments to accelerate the long development. Christine Garrington  3:10  And so Sakari what does life look like for those children compared with their full-term born peers? Sakari Lemola  3:16  They often have an increased risk for poor cognitive development, they show poor educational outcomes, less favourable employment outcomes in adulthood and increased risk for developing mental health problems. And in the PremLife project, we try to specifically answer the question, first of all, of course, what are protective factors for those born preterm. But also we try to focus also to figure out out about what are the social and emotional development of the preterm birth, particularly related to social relationships, wellbeing and things like self-esteem and self-confidence. Christine Garrington  3:58  Now, there's considerable policy interest across Europe and indeed elsewhere and ensuring that obviously, that children get the best possible start and in helping those children who for whatever rate, whatever reason may not get off to the best start. How has your work tied into that sort of policy context would you say? Sakari Lemola  4:17  In the PremLife project, we particularly aim to answer what can be done by policymakers, by practitioners, stakeholders to improve preterm children's and adolescent development? So two focal points were, one was on preschool training in math and literacy. The second point was about how schooling should be organised in general. So we compared school systems in Germany, where so called school tracking takes place. That means children are sorted into higher or lower tracks after the first few school years and we compared Germany with the UK and Finland where no school tracking takes place. That means better and the lower performing children remain in their school classes in the UK and in Finland. But children with special needs they receive remedial teaching but they are not sorted into a different school or different school classes. A third focal point was related to physical activity in childhood and adolescence and what role physical activity actually plays for mental health and social emotional development. Christine Garrington  5:32  A key piece of work from the project involved the assessment of adults who had been born preterm. What was sort of the main thinking, the main driver for for this work? Sakari Lemola  5:42  Previous work has shown that preterm children have an increased risk for poor cognitive development and they also show poor educational outcomes. And particularly, most work has focused on childhood, but less work on later outcomes like adolescence and also in adulthood. In the PremLife project we have now also focused on adolescence and adulthood. And also particularly, we focused on differences in socio-emotional outcomes in adulthood, particularly regarding social relationships, a topic that has previously been neglected So, children who were born preterm in adolescence and in adulthood, they seem to be less satisfied with their social relationships, they are less likely to be partnered in adulthood, and they are also have decreased fertility so they are less likely to have children on their own later in life. Christine Garrington  6:44  Okay, and what were the key things then to emerge about how those people who were born preterm faired later on in life? Sakari Lemola  6:52  So we found out that children born preterm to still show differences compared to their term born peers, when they are grown up particularly. Yeah, they show more mental health problems, particularly anxiety disorders, they show lower wellbeing then full term born children in friendship relationships, they are less likely to experience intimate relationships in adulthood, they are less likely to become parents on their own. Somehow, it is likely that anxiety and shyness play a role which is increased in preterm children, they are more anxious about making a step for instance, in social relationships, and that may lead to lower rates of being partnered and becoming parents themselves. Christine Garrington  7:47  Okay, now, you made some key recommendations from this. Can you talk about those recommendations and just how practitioners, policymakers and those people born preterm might benefit from from those recommendations? Sakari Lemola  8:00  With regard to schooling and education outcomes a key recommendation is the importance of early training and early support in math and literacy. So what we found is that preterm children, they appear to disproportionately benefit from preschool training in math and literacy. So, preterm children who perform well in math, reading and writing when entering into school, so very early on age of five, six years, they were more likely to receive GCSE grades that qualify later to go to university than their term bond peers actually. However, it was exactly the other way around for preterm children who perform poorly in math, reading and writing at school entry, they were less likely to get sufficient GCSE grades compared to their term born peers with similar preschool skills. So their skills at school entry, the skills and math, reading and writing appear to be more important for preterm children than for term born children. And that highlights how important early support and rhythm medial teaching plays there. A second point is that school tracking as it happens currently, is it's the current policy in in Germany, is a negative thing for preterm children probably also for for other children with early difficulties. Where people from a migration background who are not as fluent in German, for instance, as German children so children with more difficulties in school should rather receive remedial teaching but they should not be sorted out into lower performing school tracks as it is currently the case in Germany. We compared it with the outcome of preterm children who go to school in Finland and in the UK, and they seem not to have that. There is no such a negative effect of the school tracking because there is a different policy in the UK and in Finland. Christine Garrington  10:11  And what about the social and emotional side of their lives? What did you find there Sakari? Sakari Lemola  10:15  Here we had focused on two factors that appear to be relevant for preterm children. So this involves sensitive parenting on one hand and physical activity and playing sports in childhood and adolescence and preterm born children benefit from both from sensitive parenting and physical activities, such as playing sports. So both factors seem to increase self confidence and have to be considered as protective factors against

    13 min

  5. 27/04/2022

    Tackling inequalities in adolescence and working life

    In Episode 3 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast, we are in discussion with Richard Blundell. Richard is the Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL, director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the principal investigator of a DIAL project looking at human capital and inequality during adolescence and working life. In this episode we explore the work done by this project tackling inequalities in adolescence and working life.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this episode, we're delighted to be joined by Richard Blundell, David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL, and director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Richard is also the principal investigator of a DIAL project, looking at human capital and inequality during adolescence and working life. So welcome, Richard, thank you very much for joining us today. Richard Blundell  0:40  Thank you, Christine. Christine Garrington  0:41  I wonder if you can just start by telling us a little more specifically what this project has been investigating and why. Richard Blundell  0:48  Yeah, I'd be delighted to. What we're looking at in this project is the evolution of inequality through adolescence and working life. Relating to the education streams, people choose how it affects their outcomes going forward into working life, what happens during working life, what kind of training seems to work, what routes to better jobs are for people who don't, for example, go to higher education, university. Whether training can offset some of the gender gaps that we've been seeing opening up in the labour market, and whether choices in higher education matter for future labour market outcomes. So it's very much about not the early years of school - there's another project looking at that, that runs in parallel with our project, similar investigators, we're working together with them. What we're looking at here then is from adolescence onwards, and how the inequality evolves during adolescence and working life. Christine Garrington  1:58  So one area of focus has been women and work really very, very interested in in this, you've looked at the gender pay gap, the role of childcare, on women's ability to return to work, and indeed, on the role of job training, among other things. So what would you say for you are the key things to have emerged from this particular area of work Richard? Richard Blundell  2:18  Yes, this is obviously absolutely central, the kind of pay gap between men and women and how it opens up through working life is something that's been really hard to tackle and getting behind this, what are the drivers of it, and how to address it is really key to solving some of the most important inequalities that we see in working life. We're working with researchers, mainly economists, and education researchers in Norway, in the UK and in France. That's rather good, because those three countries have rather different systems of routes through education, into work, and different opportunities for women and men as they progress through their working life. And we wanted to understand what those differences could tell us about the gender pay gap. And therefore what policies could be perhaps most useful in addressing the gender pay gap. Christine Garrington  3:25  There are a couple of key things to come out of this one there. Richard Blundell  3:28  Some of its, you know, in some sense, pretty obvious. That is that work experience is really important for pay and for earnings as you go through your career for career progression. And of course, when children come along, women spend a fair amount of time not in work, perhaps still in employment on maternity leave, but not actually gaining the work experience that turns out to be so important in career progressions. We've kind of known that. But it's become really acute, even part-time work is really not sufficient for women to keep up at work with their male colleagues. There are two kind of routes to addressing this. One is to provide good quality childcare, that can have two major benefits. One is it can provide good quality inputs and care for children, which is particularly important, especially in disadvantaged families. But it can also allow women to spend more time at work and developing their career profiles. There's also a very large importance of mothers and fathers spending time with their children. And so when children come along, it's kind of inevitable, really, that work may take second place, and that there'll be less time engaged in work experience in progression. And remember, it's exactly these years in the 20s and early 30s, where all the big career progression is made in working life, and women really fall behind there. So an alternative we've been looking at, and it turns out to be rather interesting is to work instead of on work experience, but on the human capital itself, once women come back into work. Christine Garrington  5:25  So what might that look like in reality, then Richard? Richard Blundell  5:27  So you can imagine the following scenario, a woman or a man, but unfortunately, it's particularly typically, the woman who takes time off, once she returns to work, you can imagine her engaging in a training programme, and that can make up some of the loss. Well, we weren't that optimistic about that to begin with. But we've become more optimistic for two reasons, particularly in the UK and in Norway. In Norway, using the Population Register, we can follow people, right the way through their working careers, we can follow the whole of the Norwegian population. It's an exhaustive data set on everything everybody does - their qualifications, where they're working, their family structure, and so on. And what we found is that it's particularly successful for women to who've had a child early on in their career to return to some kind of schooling qualifications, and that can have a big boost to their career profiles and address some of the gender gaps that occur. In the UK it turns out similarly, women who returned to work spend quite a bit of time in training. And we found that that training, work related on the job training, it has to be accredited, and it has to be work related, those things have a payoff. And we feel that there's real room for improving this type of training. It's all part of designing education and training routes, during your working career, that work much better than the ones we currently have. And boy in in the UK, we've been training way behind in the organisation of formal routes into education and training through your working life, especially for those who don't go to university. Christine Garrington  7:29  Now, I want to move on to talk about COVID. And obviously, although not expected when your project began, the pandemic, obviously, as well as being a terrible thing for us all did provide, however, what I'm guessing was quite a fascinating and important opportunity to look at the impacts of COVID on on people's lives in this context of inequality. So what did you, what did you get to focus on there? Richard Blundell  7:52  Once we were into the first major wave of COVID, it was clear that it was going to exacerbate a lot of the inequalities during adolescence, during education and during working life, let alone health of course. The longer run impact that we're seeing is on learning - the loss of learning, the loss of school time, the loss of engagement in learning, because of being not able to go to school, those children from deprived families have had much, much more learning loss over this period, than the privilege than children in more privileged families. It suddenly became clear that space was really important. But for learning for children, it was absolutely critical. If children didn't have a quiet place with good digital access, a good setup for engaging in online classes, then that already put them behind behind. And there's many studies showing there's a huge gradient in space, in digital access, in access to these kinds of technologies across the income and and socio economic gradient. Losses have been extremely large, up to half a year of schooling loss for many, many children. The second point is that if you're at home with educated parents, who are working from home and still have time to interact with you, you're going to get that input from them. schooling is the great equaliser. It puts children from deprived backgrounds in an environment where they can learn perhaps things that they couldn't learn at home. And that was taken away. The work on Norway and France shows exactly the same there. So learning loss, huge. This doesn't usually happen in recessions by the way. This was very, very specific to COVID. Christine Garrington  9:55  And what about when you looked at matters related to work. Richard Blundell  9:58  All on the job training, apprenticeships just didn't happen. In fact, for those in their early careers, you know - 18, 19, 20 - there was an almost complete end to apprenticeships. Apprenticeships fell back by 70% or more for that younger group, exactly the group that I was mentioning before. It's vital that we get this on the job, accredited training, because they're the ones not going to university, those going to university have been served rather better. I know from my experience here that we've at UCL, we've been keeping online classes and activities going at a pretty high level, actually. And the kind of students that we have here, can engage in that quite fully.

    25 min

  6. 05/04/2022

    Nature, nurture and our later life outcomes: new insights on inequality over the lifecourse

    In Episode 2 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast, we are in discussion with Professor Hans van Kippersluis from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Hans, a professor of applied economics, is the Principal Investigator on the DIAL project, Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities, which has used innovative methods and data to explore the interplay between nature and nurture in generating health and education inequalities.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from some of the DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer term consequences might be. For this second episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Hans van Kippersluis, Professor of Applied Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. And Principal Investigator of the DIAL project, Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities - put more simply nature versus nurture. So Hans, welcome to the podcast. And I wonder if you can start by talking us through what researchers working on this project have actually been looking into. Hans van Kippersluis  0:42   What we've been doing in this project is essentially incorporating the recent availability of genetic data into social science and most prominently economic analysis. And so most of our work has focused on the interplay between genes and the environment. So in the introduction, you mentioned nature versus nurture, but actually more accurately, what we're doing is nature and nurture jointly into how they shape essentially education and health outcomes. And I think this is also the main innovation of our project, because biologists have studied nature before; social scientists have  of course, extensively studied nurture, but not many have studied the interplay, the interaction between the two. And I think this was sort of the main innovation for why we got the funding some five years ago. And so what we have done is mostly studying this interplay. But along the way, we have also made some methodological contributions to a field which is very new. Then we've also used genetic data to test all their theories, and also, I think, enrich the framework of equality of opportunity. Christine Garrington  1:35   Yeah, fantastic project. And as you've just said, you've made unprecedented use of genomic as well as survey data in the research, tell us a bit more about the information that you've been able to access? And how you've been able to use it? Hans van Kippersluis 1:47   Yeah, sure. So the interesting thing is that more and more social science datasets, so data sets that have been traditionally used by social scientists, and these are mostly extensive surveys,  are now collecting DNA information from their respondents. And this is often from blood or saliva. And what they did is basically, so more than 99% of DNA is the same across human beings. And so what we are using is only this remaining less than 1% of the variation. And these are called snips. And snips are points of your DNA that differ across human beings. And there's roughly 1 million of them. And so what we do, basically also other people have done is sort of aggregating these tiny effect sizes into an index. And this is called the polygenic index. And this is telling us something about your genetic predisposition towards a certain outcome. And this is quite interesting, because this data, this new variable, essentially can be added to existing datasets. And so we have a wealth of information that has been collected in the past on surveys on existing data. And then we simply add one indicator, one new variable. This is telling us something about people's genetic predisposition. And just to be clear, this is not like a deterministic variable. It also exhibits quite a bit of measurement error and noise. But at the group level, and that's what we have been doing is it sort of does tell us something about your genetic predisposition, and it can help us understand how certain life outcomes like education, like health, are shaped by the interplay between your genetic predisposition and your environment. Christine Garrington  3:07   Indeed, let's talk a little bit now then about some of the research findings. And you know, what's come out of this now, one piece of research we've spoken about this actually, in an earlier podcast episode, actually drew links between mothers smoking in pregnancy and their baby's birth weight. I wonder if you can just sort of summarise that for you what actually came out of that what we learned Hans van Kippersluis 3:28   this was work with with my PG students, Rita Dias Pereira and colleague Cornelius Rietveld. And for birthweight we knew that maternal smoking is one of the key environmental risk factors. And we also knew from genetic studies that genes matter in determining your birth weight. And so what we did here was essentially looking at the interaction between the two. So can higher polygenic indices protect against maternal smoking? And the answer, unfortunately, perhaps was no, in the sense that we found very, very little interaction between genes and the environmental exposure of maternal smoking. So it seems that both matter, but there doesn't seem to be any meaningful interaction between the two. So that was, to some extent surprising, but on the other hand, also perhaps logical in the sense that maternal smoking is apparently such a devastating environmental exposure that even higher genetic predisposition cannot protect you from this. Christine Garrington  4:16   Yeah, really interesting. And anybody who's interested in that can listen to Rita actually discussing that in series three, Episode Seven, of our DIAL podcast called Mums Who Smoke and their Baby's Birthweight. So do check that out if you're interested to know a little bit more about what Rita and all of the all of your colleagues did. Now, there have been some interesting findings Hans from the project around the role of genes in a child's education and specifically around parental investments. I wonder if you can explain a bit more about what you were looking to understand there.  Hans van Kippersluis 4:50   Yes, yeah, so this is one of my favourites studies. It's joint work. Also with another PG student   Muslimova and my colleagues Stephanie von Hinke, Cornelius Rietveld and Fleur Maddens. And the starting point there was actually a theory of human capital formation from economics. And it dates back all the way to the work of Nobel laureate Gary Becker. And one of the crucial assumptions in that model is that parental investments are complementary to your genetic endowments. And this assumption is actually very hard to test because often we do not have a good measure of endowments. And if we do, it may already be contaminated by parental investment. So many people, for example, use birth weights. But of course, well as we just learned, maternal smoking may have a large effect on your birth weight, so it's not fully free of your parents' behaviour. And the other thing is that your parental investments often respond to endowments. So if you have a child with specific needs, of course, parents respond to this. So the problem of testing this assumption is that endowments and investments are actually always very closely entangled. And that makes it very hard to test whether they are complementary or not. So what we did here was using one's genetic endowment, and that is actually has a very nice property and that it's fixed at conception, so it cannot be affected by your parental investments. And what we did was using the child's birth order to proxy for parental investments. So what we know from earlier studies is that firstborns tend to get more parental attentions on average than later points. So this is one after all, because they have undivided attention until the arrival of later borns. And this extra parental investment is actually independent of your endowments. It simply derives from the fact that you have more time if you have one child as opposed to multiple children. So what we did in this study is looking within families comparing siblings that were first born to later borns, and then further analysing whether this firstborn advantage was stronger for firstborn siblings who randomly inherited the higher polygenic index for educatio. I think this was a nice, very unique setting to test this theoretical assumption that parental investments are complements to genetic endowment. Christine Garrington  6:45   What did you find here? Then what do we learn about the role of genetics in affording in affording certain children advantages later on in life? Hans van Kippersluis 6:53   So what we found was that indeed, the firstborn effect seems to be stronger for siblings who randomly inherited higher polygenic indices. And I think this is evidence in favour of this theoretical assumption of complementarity between endowments and investments. And it also means that your genetic predisposition cannot just give you a direct advantage. But it also means that this advantage may be kind of amplified by your parental or your teacher investments. And this complementarity, I think also suggests once again, that for disadvantaged children, so the other side of the coin, we need to start very, very early and follow up these early investments also with data investments to make them as productive as possible. Christine Garrington  7:29   So Hans, some fascinating research and findings. I wonder if there's been a standout or surprising finding for you from the project.  Hans van Kippersluis 7:36   I  think methodologically, what we've learned is that there's still a world to explore in terms of using genetic data in social science, beca

    12 min

  7. 01/04/2022

    The impact of inequality on the lives of children

    In Episode 1 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast we're in discussion with Professor Kjell Salvanes and Dr Helen Wareham to talk about the impact of inequality on the lives of children. Kjell is the Principal Investigator on Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities while Helen is a Research Associate on the project Social InEquality and its Effects on Child Development.    Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to inequality over the lifecourse. In Series 4 we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this first episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Professor Kjell Salvanes and Dr. Helen Wareham to talk about the impact of inequality on the lives of children. Kjell heads up a project called Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities, while Helen is a research associate on the project, Social InEquality and its Effects on child Development. So Helen, let's start with the work that you and your team have been doing, looking at how young children are getting on and where inequalities might be occurring. I wonder if you can just start by explaining really a bit more about that the main focus of your project. Helen Wareham  0:50  So the main focus of SEED, that's the acronym we have the project is to identify the mechanisms that social inequalities have on children's, particularly their oral language development, and where we can try and identify what patterns there are in those inequalities, and the impact that it has, and whether those continue throughout children's lives, and into adulthood as well. We're a team of around 20 researchers, and we're quite a broad range of specialists. So we have everything from speech therapists, developmental psychologists, but also medical staff, so ENT, ear, nose and throat specialists. And we're spread across a number of countries, as well. So there's a sort of focus around the countries involved in the project. So that's Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, but also how we can look across those different countries and with broader collaborations with teams in France, the USA and Australia as well. Christine Garrington  1:44  So tell us a bit about what your team of 20 researchers in all these different countries has been actually doing over the last few years. Helen Wareham  1:51  In the three main countries for the project, we have really rich cohort data. So that's where people have been interviewed they've there's been kind of assessments that have happened with children, quite often from birth, and then they've been tracked at regular points throughout their lives. And these create really rich data sources. So we can look at what happens in children's lives and how that then changes over, over time. Because we have this rich data, we're able to look for really complex novel methods to try and understand the impact that inequalities have on children's lives over time. And a lot of the work in our projects has been driven by PhD students. They've been looking at everything from the impact of slight and mild hearing loss on children. So my colleague Lisanne who's based at Rostam University in the Erasmus Medical Centre there has found that there's a significant impact on behavioural and school performance in children where they have the kind of slight or mild hearing loss, that's all just so clinical, but just enough that it's obviously then impacting their later life. And then my colleagues, Natalie and Wei have been looking at the interactions between parenting behaviours, and children's language and behaviour development. And then my colleague, Claudia has been looking particularly at instances of sort of poverty and how that impacts on children's language development. Christine Garrington  3:12  I know you've been very successful as well Helen in engaging more broadly with this work outside of the research and the academic community. Helen Wareham  3:20 While we've kind of been doing a lot of this very in-depth research, we've also been able to engage more broadly with policymakers. Right at the start of this project, through our partnership with the Liveness Association, we were able to meet with some members of the EU Commission to discuss our project. We were given the opportunity as well to comment on some early care and education guidelines that the Commission we're working on, and that that's since then been published. So well, yeah, quite a bit of over the last few years I suppose. Christine Garrington  3:50  So I guess what we're keen to know, what many people will be keen to know, that is, after all of this work, what would you say are sort of the key things that have emerged that that maybe we didn't know, before, now, you've had this opportunity to delve so deeply into these issues. Helen Wareham  4:04  There's sort of three key things that have come out of this. One has been, we've really been able to look really in depth at some of these relationships to kind of get an idea about how some of these relationships work. Some of the nuances I said, you know, about parental behaviours and interactions with children. And that's been great. But then also, I think one of the really key things we found is just how persistent inequality is, and how significantly it impacts on families and then children's lives and it's a really it's not just a persistent relationship. It's it's deeply entrenched, in that persistant-ness, it's very slow to change that. So when we think about inequality, we often think we can make a change and it will kind of happened within someone's lifetime, when we're looking at, you know, what happens over the course of a child's life. But actually to resolve certain inequalities, we're really looking at some of this being a multi-generational approach that no matter how good a start, we sometimes we're able to provide all the interventions we can deliver, that isn't going to necessarily manifest in that child's lifetime, it could be two, three generations later. Christine Garrington  5:18  Now that's all really interesting. I think we'll come back and talk about that a bit more in a second Helen. And Kjell, I'm guessing that quite a lot of what Helen has just said resonates with, with you. And I know there's a real synergy between what Helen and her team have been looking at and what your projects been investigating. So let's just take a step back here and get you to talk us through what it what it is that you've been trying to get to grips with. Kjell Salvanes  5:39  The background for our project is, you know, the increased inequality that we're seeing in many countries. What we are trying to do is to understand, you know, increase in the socio-economic gradient, as they say, you know, the difference between different groups of people. And in particular, we're interested in inequality, showing up both in education, but also, in terms of behaviour, you know, crime and stuff like that. Christine Garrington  6:04  Tell us a bit more about some of the specific things you were looking at, and why. Kjell Salvanes  6:07  Precisely we try to understand how shocks in a family are affecting their children in different stages of the life of a kid. The other part is, the importance of public policies, let's say day-care policies, family leave policies, and how that can affect the development of children, and especially what economists call investment in human capital or education or their skills. And also how the dynamics in the families how that is important how, you know, let's say there is an income shock, because Dad loses his job, how the dynamics in the family being changed, and the role or the mom and the dad, in affecting the children. Christine Garrington  6:50  I know, you have a fantastic team, largely economists from leading institutions in Norway, France and the UK, but you're interested in broader things, including health, you know, particularly around child development and, and outcomes. So tell us a little bit more about how you've gone about looking into these questions. Kjell Salvanes  7:10  I mean, we are using data - very detailed registered data from Norway, and France, and also partly now from the UK. And we are combining these type of approaches using registered data, which sort of consists of generations of families, and also combining it with experimental work, interventions, and also surveys. Christine Garrington  7:35  and what does all this fabulous data and these methods enable you to do? Kjell Salvanes  7:40 You can look at the whole development of kids from, you know, pre birth basically to, then we can look at adults, but you can also look at up to, let's say, 60. A lot of what we have been doing is to try to distinguish between the impact of something that is happening early on. It could be a negative shock, it could be policy intervention, or it could be parental decisions early on preschool, you know, middle years of schooling, and then early teenage. We see a lot of differences, you know, before they start school. And then the question is how this interacts with what is happening in the, in the early and later school years. We looking at different types of skills. I mean, you know, so it could be, you know, more the cognitive types of school skills, but it could be also socio emotional skills, how you you know behave. Christine Garrington  8:36 Indeed and can you talk us through what what's emerged that you think is of particular interest? Kjell Salvanes  8:42 You know, one of my colleagues at UCL Gabriella Conti, her work and partly together with us have been looking at early health outcomes for kids, and how that can predict the performance of kids when they are teenage

    22 min

  8. 16/03/2022

    Ability grouping: does it affect UK primary school pupils' enjoyment of Maths and English?

    In Episode 16 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast we’re discussing ability grouping in UK primary schools and how it affects children's enjoyment of certain subjects. Our guest today is Queralt Capsada-Munsech from the University of Glasgow, who as part of DIAL's LIFETRACK project has been looking at primary school children's enjoyment of English and Maths at age seven, and later at age 11 to see whether ability grouping positively or negatively impacts their enjoyment of those subjects.  Does ability grouping affect UK primary school pupils’ enjoyment of Maths and English? is research by Vikki Boliver and Queralt Capsada-Munsech, and is published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're talking about how grouping children by ability at school affects their enjoyment of certain subjects. Our guest is Queralt Capsada-Munsech from the University of Glasgow, who as part of DIAL's Life Track project has been looking at primary school children's enjoyment of English and Maths at age seven, and later at age 11 to see whether ability grouping positively or negatively impacts their enjoyment of those subjects.   Queralt Capsada-Munsech  0:29  There are people who are advocates of ability grouping, and their main argument is usually that high ability pupils improve their attainment, while there is no detriment in lower ability, once their academic performance mainly. But you know, the opponents in the general debate of ability grouping, what they say is that high ability students only do marginally better when they are grouped with a, yeah with a group of students that are homogenous to them. While lower ability ones are the ones that are substantially worse off from these ability grouping. And what we have seen mostly in previous research is that there is the main mechanism that we call that is the self-fulfilling prophecy of low attainment that you know, because you are grouping the low ability grouping and people, and students are aware of that. So they just know that they are not doing as well. And they continue to do more poorly while those that are in the high ability grouping, so they think better of themselves. And that leads them to better academic achievement. And usually, the way it has been measured has been based on what we call academic self-concept that basically is asking students, how good are you at maths, at English or at school in general?  Christine Garrington  1:48  So talk us through some of the policy context here - ability grouping as an education policy. Queralt Capsada-Munsech   1:53  In the gaze of the UK ability grouping was encouraged by the New Labour governments in the 1990s and in the 2000s. And the main idea was that it would raise standards generally, with higher grades in brightest kids in particular, that was something that was quite influential in past decades. And that had clearly an effect in policy because, you know, the prevalence of grouping practices still remains in place. And it increased quite a lot for the past few years. And we see in the UK, even that ability grouping is becoming increasingly common in early years, you know, at ages three and four and even in Key Stage One ages five to seven was, which was something that we didn't see in the past. While you know, in the 1990s, there were fewer than 3% of primary schools who reported that they were streaming students by 2008 16% of seven year olds, were being streamed by ability for all subjects and 26% were being taught in ability sets for English and Math so that's quite the change. Christine Garrington  3:01  What was it for you that you wanted to look at exactly about the way in which children are grouped by ability at primary school? What was it you wanted to look at and why? Queralt Capsada-Munsech   3:10  Empirical evidence what did show us that at least for the UK suggested that there weren't many benefits of practising ability grouping. Mainly at the secondary level was most of the studies and it did little to raise the school's standards, and it was more detrimental for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. And it was through that, you know, measured ability at the early ages is predictive of ability group placement. But so were also a lot of socio-economic indicators. So there were also a few mechanisms, you know, that people were looking at. So for instance, teaching practices or teaching learning environments. So the reason why this happened, that it was more detrimental for some instruments to the individual than others because teacher quality is correlated with ability grouping, meaning that mainly you know, teachers that are more qualified, more experienced tend to be a placed with a high ability grouping, while less experienced in the lower one, which maybe should be the opposite. But also because of students self-perception, so they internalise these labels of consequences for their self-esteem. We could see that there were many studies that had been undertaken at secondary level, but not that many at the primary level. So what we want to talk that was that academic enjoyment so that it would be different question like, how much have you enjoyed reading or doing number work or English or maths more, more precisely. Christine Garrington  4:45  So why was it important to look at how much children enjoyed subjects? What was it about that particular concept or idea that was was important in your research? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  4:56  Academic self-concept, the question how good you are at? It's informed by students awareness of their test scores or their ability group placement, but it's also a relational construct, you know how good you are compared to the rest of your pupils in your group or in your class. While academic enjoyment, we thought that it was a more an intrinsic motivation and is more of a personal preference, you know, you might like or dislike reading, even if you are very good at English or not. So it's more of an independent one. And it's less relational. So it's not that you enjoy reading compared to your peers, it's more they do you enjoy it more? Yes or no, or to what extent. Christine Garrington  5:39  So talk us through what you actually did. Queralt Capsada-Munsech  5:40  The question that we wanted to look at was looking okay, for instance in primary school at age seven, how much did pupils enjoy Maths or English and school in general? And then to look later on, you know, at age 11, before going to secondary school, how much they enjoy again, Maths, English and school in general. And to see to what extent it had changed from age seven to 11, depending on the ability group that they were in. So we were expecting that, okay, maybe your academic enjoyment of Maths might be different to those that are in the top or bottom ability group. But our hypothesis was that, theoretically, there is no reason for people to change how much they enjoy or not enjoy reading, for instance, from age seven to eleven, regardless of the relative group they are in. Christine Garrington  6:38  So where did you get your information from? And why was it a good source of data to help you address these questions that you were interested in? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  6:47  So we use one of the cohort studies that are called, that its the Millennium Cohort Study. But basically, it's a longitudinal survey that follows about 19,000 people born in the UK in 2000 and 2002, approximately. You have the same people, the same individuals, and they have been surveyed throughout their lifetime. What it was important for us in order to make this comparison is that we would have that data about the same individuals, but also that we would have like similar questions at two points in time. So in this case, for instance, because if we want to check if there is a change or not in academic enjoyment, from age seven to eleven, we needed to have this very same question of academic enjoyment at those two points in times. And in addition, obviously, we had some information about ability grouping. And so. Christine Garrington  7:41  And when it came to this question of whether being grouped by ability did in some way influence whether a child liked a subject or not, what did you see? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  7:50  If we start just with the descriptive statistics, we already saw, obviously, that there were some differences. So maybe it's worth starting by saying that, you know, overall, there was quite a lot of academic enjoyment among students. So the majority of them like a lot Maths, or reading or English, and most of the students so in most cases above 35%, were placed in the high ability one. And students that were placing the low ability one was usually smaller numbers like below 20%. That already gave us an idea of the distribution. But more importantly, yeah, when just looking at some bivariate descriptive statistics, we could see that those that are in high ability groups, tended to enjoy more Maths, for instance, than those that were placed in the low ability group. And that has stayed like, quiet similar when we look at it both at age seven, and eleven. So that's something that we could see just from the descriptive statistics. Christine Garrington  9:00  Now you had some very specific findings around maths didn't you? I wonder if you can talk us through what it was exactly that you saw there. Queralt Capsada-Munsech  9:07  Being placed in a lower rather than a high ability group at age seven, depress the probability of coming to enjoy continuing to enjoy or even to increasing your enjoyment of Maths by age eleven. And that stayed like this way even after controlling for you know, students measured ability in Maths, sex and social background at age seven. So we found that yeah, re

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About

Tuning into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse

Information

  • Creator
    Dynamics of Inequality Across the Lifecourse (DIAL)
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2022
  • Episodes
    41
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    DIAL

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