Parental Background and Child Outcomes: does money matter and what else matters?

At this half-day seminar, IFS researchers will present results from a number of research projects, each addressing the issue of the link between parental backgrounds and child outcomes. The research has been funded by HM-Treasurys Evidence Based Research Fund, and co-funded by Department for Education and Skills, Her Majestys Customs and Excise, Department for Work and Pensions, and Department of Culture Media and Sport.

The policy context for our research has been the ongoing government commitment to reduce child poverty and improve child well being. The over-arching aim of our work has been to provide further evidence on the extent to which increasing parental incomes - for example through continued increases in both in-work and out-of work benefits - is likely to improve outcomes for children, compared to other policy options.

The evidence we provide is important because although previous research has found that low incomes are clearly associated with poor outcomes early in life and further into adulthood, we cannot be certain of the extent to which this link is causal, or in other words if giving poor parents more money will make for better child or adult outcomes.

During the course of the morning we will give brief presentations covering:

• Project overview and methodological issues in uncovering the effects of income on child outcomes (Alissa Goodman, IFS)
• Who benefits from child benefit? (Laura Blow, IFS)
• Parental income and youth smoking (Andrew Leicester, IFS)
• The longer-term impacts of early education on child development (Barbara Sianesi, IFS)
• Ethnic differences in birth outcomes (Lorraine Dearden / Alice Mesnard, IFS)
• The returns to education using the Danish twins data (Ian Walker, Warwick University and IFS)

A summary of the full set of research conducted under this project is available in: Parental background and child outcomes: does money matter and what else matters? by Laura Blow, Alissa Goodman, Ian Walker, and Frank Windmeijer, DfES Research Report 660.

The report includes summaries of a number of additional projects, including the effects of parental income and education on childrens school leaving decisions, the effects of school quality on school-leaving, the longer-term effects of teenage motherhood, and the link between parental incomes and material deprivation.

A list of relevant publications can be downloaded from the IFS website

To attend this conference, please contact Bonnie Brimstone, by email or on 020 7291 4818.