Marriage, partnership and cohabitation

Children born to married parents achieve better cognitive and social outcomes, on average. This report asks why this is so.

Using a simple decomposition analysis, we show that around two thirds of the socio-economic gap in attainment at age 16 can be accounted for by long-run family background characteristics and prior ability, suggesting that circumstances and investments made considerably earlier in the child's life explain the majority of the gap in test scores between young people from rich and poor families.

This report analyses the distribution of couple penalties and premiums in the tax and benefit system using a large, statistically representative sample of households.

This paper looks at evidence as to whether expanding preschool education provides work incentives for mothers.

This paper has been written as a review of the current tax treatment of the family in the UK.

This report presents the findings of research into how and when differences in work behaviour between men and women develop, focusing on the evolution of the gender gaps immediately after childbirth and during the initial years of family development.

We look at the effects of the reforms introduced since 1997 and at the proposals of the parties in this area.

In this paper we investigate recent trends in childcare use amongst families in Great Britain, and provide a thorough comparison of the different household survey and administrative datasets.

This study was commissioned by the Department for Education

In the previous edition, we argued that governments might care about child poverty for reasons of equity and efficiency, and we introduced the concept of an equivalence scale as a way to help compare well-being across different sorts of households.