London School of Economics and Political Science

About: London School of Economics and Political Science is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Population. The organization has 8759 authors who have published 35017 publications receiving 1436302 citations.

The Impact of Income Components on the Distribution of Family Incomes

Abstract: Attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income. This paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules. U. S. data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules. A wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained, even when restricted to only “naturally†derived decomposition rules. Some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties.

The educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation in Europe.

Abstract: Nearly every European Country has experienced some increase in nonmarital childbearing, largely due to increasing births within cohabitation. Relatively few studies in Europe, however, investigate the educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation or how it changed over time. Using retrospective union and fertility histories, we employ competing risk hazard models to examine the educational gradient of childbearing in cohabitation in eight countries across europe. In all countries studied, birth risks within cohabitation demonstrated a negative educational gradient. When directly comparing cohabiting fertility with marital fertility, the negative educational gradient persists in all countries except Italy, although differences were not significant in Austria, France, and West Germany. To explain these findings, we present an alternative explanation for the increase in childbearing within cohabitation that goes beyond the explanation of the Second Demographic Transition and provides a new interpretation of the underlying mechanisms that may influence childbearing within cohabitation.

Smart and Illicit: Who Becomes an Entrepreneur and Do They Earn More?

Abstract: We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between “entrepreneurs” and other business owners. We show that the incorporated self-employed and their businesses engage in activities that demand comparatively strong nonroutine cognitive abilities, while the unincorporated and their firms perform tasks demanding relatively strong manual skills. People who become incorporated business owners tend to be more educated and— as teenagers—score higher on learning aptitude tests, exhibit greater self-esteem, and engage in more illicit activities than others. The combination of “smart” and “illicit” tendencies as youths accounts for both entry into entrepreneurship and the comparative earnings of entrepreneurs. Individuals tend to experience a material increase in earnings when becoming entrepreneurs, and this increase occurs at each decile of the distribution.

The rise of cohabitation and childbearing outside marriage in western Europe

Abstract: In many western European nations there have been dramatic recent rises in unmarried cohabitation and having children outside marriage. Here we examine the extent and depth of these changes across nations. Our analysis includes an examination of type of first partnership, duration of cohabiting unions, characteristics of cohabitants, and dissolution risks of different types of unions. We also examine the partnership context within which children are born, the extent to which children born to cohabiting parents see the marriage of their parents, as well as the variation in dissolution probabilities associated with different partnership histories. The analysis shows that there is not one but several European perspectives on the rise of cohabitation and non-marital childbearing.