Department of Social Policy seminars

When the burden lifts: The effect of school and day care re-openings on parent’s employment and life satisfaction

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 2 February 2023

Speaker: Professor Marita Jacob, University of Cologne

Abstract: At the onset of the pandemic in many countries around the globe, governments decided to close of schools and day care facilities with the aim of slowing the spread of the virus. Increased childcare duties of parents have been the most prominent explanation of the observed stronger decrease of parent’s employment and life satisfaction, in particular for mothers, compared to childless people. However, school and day care closures have been implemented alongside several other containment measures. For example, in March 2020 in Germany, the government shut down nonessential shops, bars and restaurants, required employers to allow for remote work, and closed most public institutions. These containment measures might be also particularly relevant for parents if work and daily chores became more stressful. Hence, we aim to shed more light on the specific role of school and day-care closures for parents. We use the temporal variability of school and day care re-openings in different German federal states (Bundesländer) that allows us to single out the effect of care duties. In our empirical analyses, we use data from the German IAB-HOPP study which is unique in providing repeated monthly measures of employment, working hours and life satisfaction at the onset of the pandemic. We merge this survey data with data on exact dates of school and day care openings that allow us to measure the immediate effect on working hours and life satisfaction two weeks later. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approach, our results reveal a non-negligible positive effect of an earlier and more far-reaching reopening of schools and day care facilities on parents’ working hours. With regard to life satisfaction, a positive effect of re-openings can be observed for mothers only and this effect is practically non-existent for fathers. Our results contribute to previous research that concluded closures to be burdensome for parents by providing sound empirical and quantified evidence on the effects of re-openings.

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More driven? Experimental evidence on differences in cognitive effort by social origin

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 26 January 2023

Speaker: Dr Jonas Radl, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Abstract: While large-scale competence assessments like PISA show a robust positive association between socioeconomic status (SES) and test scores, little is known about social inequalities in effort. Differences in effort by social origin are not only a potential explanatory mechanism underlying SES gaps in performance, but also a key unknown factor in normative debates about equality of opportunity. The study draws on large-scale laboratory experiments carried out between 2019 and 2022 in Spain and Germany. Around 1,300 fifth-grade students performed three real-effort tasks under three different incentive conditions. Do children from privileged backgrounds exert greater effort than children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

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An historical analysis of NGO registration in contemporary China

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 19 January 2023

Speakers: Dr Tim Hildebrandt, Department of Social Policy, LSE, Dr Blake Miller, Department of Methodology, LSE, and Guodong Ju, Department of Social Policy, LSE.

Abstract: Amidst the retreat of the welfare state, austerity, and other economic reforms globally, non-governmental organisations have grown in number and expanded in scope to do the work previously done by the state. As such, the study of NGOs is of great import to social policy. While these actors have been welcomed into policy making and implementation, governments around the world, irrespective of regime type, have sought to manage the development of NGOs through registration frameworks. In the case of authoritarian states like China’s, NGO registration has been used to control the size and shape of the civil society sector, ultimately to protect the state regime from threats to its legitimacy and monopoly of power. But the process of registration in China has remained opaque, both for NGO actors who may seek to be registered, and scholars wishing to study registration. We still have a poor understanding of what determines registration over time and how registration is affected by direct or proximate policy shifts; administrative data on NGO registration has thus far been largely inaccessible and lacking important specificity. As such, in this research we use machine learning to make better sense of official government data on NGO registration, creating new variables for the location and issue focus of each entry—factors which extant literature has identified as playing an important role in whether an organisation is registered or not. In this talk, we will discuss the method by which we made sense of the data, present descriptive statistics and preliminary results from inference models.

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Energy taxes, social policy, and economic vulnerability

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 8 December 2022

Speaker: Professor Kenneth Nelson, SoFI, Stokholm University

Abstract: The increased seriousness of many environmental problems does not only pose threats to ecological sustainability. Many of the policies that are put in place to steer people towards less environmentally harmful consumption tend to be regressive and weigh more heavily on the poor. Without an ambitious redistributive social agenda, carbon taxes and similar policies to regulate consumption may increase poverty risks and create less socially sustainable societies. In this talk, I will introduce our new project on the social and political consequences of environmental policy, and present some initial results on green taxes on household consumption, poverty, and social policy.

No video available

What accounts for the recent 'tutoring revolution' in English education policy?

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 1 December 2022

Speaker: Dr Sonia Exley, LSE

Abstract: For more than 10 years now, proportions of school-aged students receiving private supplementary tutoring (PST) outside mainstream school in England have been increasing. Government education policy in the same period has included new attempts to regulate the PST landscape, and also new and growing attempts to subsidise PST. Most recently, since the covid-19 pandemic, subsidised PST has been front and centre within government efforts to help students ‘catch up’ following major periods of lost learning during England’s 2020 and 2021 school closures (see for example the 2020 creation of a National Tutoring programme).

What accounts for a growing government interest in spending and creating new policy specifically on PST? Drawing on an analysis of government policy documents, parliamentary debates and sources published by other key policy actors since 2015, in this paper I will explore the possible role of changing ideas about PST in the English education landscape. I will consider too changes to policy making and governance in English education which may have produced conditions particularly ripe for certain ideas about PST to have taken hold. 

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Why research (does not) affect policy: experimental evidence on the role of perceived political bias

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 17 November 2022

Speaker: Dr Berkay Ozcan, LSE

Chair: Professor Stephen Jenkins, LSE

Abstract: The "perceived credibility" of the evidence is a critical issue in bridging the gap between scientific evidence and policy implementation. If policymakers believe the messenger, i.e., the person presenting the scientific evidence, has an ideological agenda, they may be more or less inclined to pay attention to the scientific evidence, even if it is produced with the highest scientific standards. Using a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), this study investigates whether policymakers' political biases influence their interests and attitudes toward scientific evidence and policy adoption. We use a sample of all touristic municipalities in Spain to send local policymakers either a policy brief or a link to a newspaper article describing high-quality scientific evidence on a very low-cost, effective, and uncontroversial policy to increase tourism. Furthermore, we create random variations in the identity of the source of information to signal a possible ideological bias. We combine survey and administrative data to define our sample of treated and control municipalities and the random assignment to the different treatment arms. Ex post, we then compare additional measures of interest in the scientific evidence and the recommended policy. We investigate whether policymakers pay attention and read the recommended policy/evidence and whether they eventually adopt it. Finally, we build a rich dataset with daily data on bank card payments to see if the policy implementation resulted in increased tourism revenues (i.e. benefits of the policy). 

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Why do we need data on sex?

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 10 November 2022

Speaker: Professor Alice Sullivan, UCL

Chair: Professor Stephen Jenkins, LSE

Abstract: Data on sex has been collected by health scientists, social scientists, and public bodies for centuries. Sex is recognised as a fundamental variable, which affects health and social and economic outcomes. This presentation explains why collecting data on sex is important and documents some examples of public bodies and surveys moving away from data collection on sex. I address the reasons why we are losing data on sex and examine the arguments that have been used to oppose data collection on sex. In conclusion, I argue that accurate data on sex is essential for the human sciences, for policymaking, and to tackle sexism.

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Disability and Trade Union Membership in the UK

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 20 October 2022

Speaker: Professor Melanie Jones, Cardiff University

Chair: Professor Stephen Jenkins, LSE

Abstract: Using data from two national surveys, the Quarterly Labour Force Survey and the Workplace Employment Relations Survey, we establish evidence of a robust disability gap in trade union membership in the UK. After controlling for differences in other personal and work-related characteristics, disabled employees are found to be 3.6 percentage points (12-14%) more likely to be union members than non-disabled employees. While the gap is consistent with evidence that disabled employees hold more positive perceptions of union representation, we find no evidence that union membership is associated with disproportionate benefits for disabled employees in terms of a reduction in disability-related labour market inequality. 

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A Political Economy of Behavioural Public Policy

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 13 October 2022

Speaker: Dr Adam Oliver, LSE

Chair: Professor Stephen Jenkins, LSE

Abstract: There has been much interest in informing the design of public policy with findings from behavioural science over the past fifteen years. The main catalyst of this interest were frameworks that argued for a soft paternalistic approach to behavioural-informed policy - or in other words, the targeting of behavioural change to mitigate so-called behavioural biases in human decision making, for the benefit of those targeted, but without the use of mandates. In this presentation Dr. Oliver will discuss what he believes to be a main point of debate for the future development of behavioural public policy: namely, whether the emphasis upon paternalistic intervention that has dominated the development of the field to date ought to continue, or whether behavioural public policy would be more appropriately placed within a liberal framework. 

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Orderly Britain

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series

Thursday 6 October 2022

Speaker: Professor Tim Newburn, LSE

Chair: Professor Stephen Jenkins, LSE

Abstract: This talk is based on Tim Newburn’s latest book - a quirky history of post-war Britain. Rather than grand matters of politics, culture, and the economy, it focuses on the mundane and the quotidian, taking in such matters as dog fouling, the decline of the public lavatory, and double-parking. How did we become a nation of plastic bag-wielding poop scoopers? What do changing patterns of smoking and drinking say about modern British society? And is queuing really a quintessentially British activity? Delving beneath the surface of some of our daily activities, it asks what makes us orderly Britons? 

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