ESRI Research Seminars 2023/2024 Programme

Riccardo Crescenzi (LSE), Competitveness, Trade and FDI

Beyond Attraction - Does investment promotion work for FDI retention and expansion?

Geoff Kenny (ECB), Macroeconomics

Labour Supply Response to Windfall Gains

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David Reimer (University of Iceland), Education

Changing Inequality at Educational Transitions

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George Stoye (IFS), Health

Financial incentives and doctor labour supply: Evidence from a pension tax reform in England 

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Lucia Reisch (Cambridge University), Behavioural Science

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Nawid Siassi (TU Vienna), Tax, Welfare and Pensions

Low-Income Families, Maternal Labor Supply, and Welfare Reform

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Stephan Köppe (UCD)

Non-take-up of in-work benefits: determinants, benefit erosion and indexing.

The presentation is based on a co-authored paper with Diego Muñoz-Higueras, Raffael Granell and Amadeo Fuenmayor Fernández (University of Valencia). 

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Abstract

Workfare schemes were introduced to promote work as the main path out of poverty, but with the result that in-work poverty emerged as a new risk. Ireland’s Working Family Payment aims to mitigate in-work poverty of families. 

Based on EU-SILC (2014-2019) we estimate a non-take-up rate between 63-76%, which poses a major obstacle for effective poverty prevention. Moreover, we stress that non-take-up of in-work benefits differs to minimum income schemes. We provide new evidence on how labour market characteristics play an important role in explaining non-take-up, especially self-employment and the interaction with unemployment benefits.

Benefit erosion is a key factor in declining eligibility, which should be addressed by indexing. Furthermore, we propose policy reforms around automatic enrolment or tax credits to mitigate non-take-up and alleviate in-work poverty.

Katherin Barg; Valentina Perinetti Casoni, University of Bristol

How accurate are teachers’ perceptions of students’ enjoyment, effort and misbehaviour in school, and do student’s social background and ethnicity play a part? Evidence from England and Scotland. 

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This talk presents findings from a project that is studying the relationship between student socioeconomic status (SES)/ethnicity and discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions of the student’s effort, enjoyment and misbehaviour in school. Academic effort, enjoyment and behaviour have been shown to be important determinants of children’s school attainment and teachers’ perceptions of such attitudes influence how teachers judge their students’ academic abilities. We ask whether discrepancies (or ‘inaccuracies’) in teachers’ perceptions of students’ effort and enjoyment are linked to student SES or, in other words, whether teachers systematically over- or under-estimate the effort and enjoyment of students of certain SES. In a separate analysis, we ask whether discrepancies between teachers’ perceptions of students’ misbehaviour and the students’ own reports of their misbehaviour are associated with student ethnicity. 

Our focus lies on primary school children who are around 10 to 11 years old, an age at which teacher-student relationships are particularly important. We use data on England from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) and on Scotland from the Growing Up in Scotland study (GUS). These large-scale survey data sets provide rich, representative information on students’ family background and students’ own reports of attitudes towards school, as well as teacher-reported perceptions of such attitudes, thus enabling us to capture discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions. Through the comparison of England and Scotland we also explore whether certain institutional features might be linked to discrepancies or congruence in teachers’ perceptions and students’ own reports of student academic attitudes.

Kitty Stewart (LSE)

Separating needs and entitlement: A mixed methods study of the impact of the UK’s two-child limit and benefit cap

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Rescheduled to September