Are educational outcomes subject to a "grandparent effect"? We comprehensively and critically review the growing literature on this question. Fifty-eight percent of 69 analyses report that grandparents' (G1) socioeconomic characteristics are associated with children's (G3) educational outcomes, independently of the characteristics of parents (G2). This is not clearly patterned by study characteristics, except sample size. The median ratio of G2:G1 strength of association with outcomes is 4.1, implying that grandparents matter around a quarter as much as parents for education. On average, 30 percent of the bivariate G1-G3 association remains once G2 information is included. Grandparents appear to be especially important where G2 socioeconomic resources are low, supporting the compensation hypothesis. We further discuss whether particular grandparents matter, the role of assortative mating, and the hypothesis that G1-G3 associations should be stronger where there is (more) G1-G3 contact, for which repeated null findings are reported. We recommend that measures of social origin include information on grandparents.

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Depressive symptoms are disproportionately high among women and less educated individuals. One mechanism proposed to explain this is the differential vulnerability hypothesis—that these groups experience particularly strong increases in symptoms in response to stressful life events. We identify limitations to prior work and present evidence from a new approach to life stress research using the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Preliminarily, we replicate prior findings of differential vulnerability in between-individual models. Harnessing repeated measures, however, we show that apparent findings of differential vulnerability by both sex and education are artifacts of confounding. Men and women experience similar average increases in depressive symptoms after stressful life events. One exception is tentative evidence for a stronger association among women for events occurring to others in the household. We term this the “female vulnerability to network events” hypothesis and discuss with reference to Kessler and McLeod’s related “cost of caring” hypothesis.

A now-substantial literature claims that job loss and union dissolution (the end of a marriage or cohabiting relationship) each increase individuals’ risk of the other, highlighting that major negative life events in the labour market and family can spill over across domains. We address three limitations of this research using UK data. First, these associations might arise from unmeasured factors which jointly predispose individuals to the two events. Second, the distinction between job loss (an event) and unemployment (the state it may lead to) has been neglected. Third, where the impact of unemployment has been considered, its duration has not. We simultaneously model both processes: does job loss (or being unemployed) lead to union dissolution, and does union dissolution (or being divorced/separated) lead to job loss? To investigate the role of unobserved, time-invariant confounders, we model the individual-specific effects as random variables allowed to correlate across the models for the two outcomes. Upon allowing such cross-process correlations, we find that job loss and union dissolution have modest and non-significant prospective associations with one another. We also find no support for a connection between being divorced/separated and subsequent job loss. Unemployment appears to increase risk of union dissolution; by attending to duration we uncover gender differences in this relationship.

I review social, economic, and policy trends across education, employment, housing, and wealth in the UK over the past half-century, and compare how different generations have fared in each of these areas. Younger generations cannot be said to have had it wholly ‘better’ or ‘worse’, but a recurrent finding is a decline in the opportunities available in all these areas to young people who do not enter higher education and lack other advantages such as access to parental wealth. Among the likely ongoing consequences of this decline are a less open society, lower productivity, and lower fertility.Chapter 6, starting on page 81, gives a more substantial summary of the report.This work was commissioned by The Future is Bright Charitable Trust, whose goal is to mobilise older generations to help pass on opportunities to young people. In this spirit, chapter 6 ends by offering suggestions for individual action with respect to education and employment, housing, and investment.