The first Research Forum session of the academic year 2023-2024

The Department of Political and Social Sciences invites DCPIS members, PhD, and Master students.

It will be hosted by Pau Baizan, ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Social & Behavioural Sciences.

Join us!

Presentation: The Concentration of Children and Its Consequences for Inequality and Poverty

Speaker: Berkay Ozcan, Assistant Professor, London School of Economics & Political Science.

Chair: Pau Baizan, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Research Group: SocioDemo)

Date: Thursday, November 16th, 2024

Time: 12pm - 1:30pm CEST

Room: Mercè Rodoredas Auditorium

Building: Mercè Rodoreda, Ciutadella Campus

This will be a hybrid event that you can attend in person or online.

Zoom Link: https://upf-edu.zoom.us/j/91779754929?pwd=bGxGNnNFTHJGM2RRcE42MHRlVFpGUT09

Meeting ID: 91779754929

Abstract:

We study a seldom-discussed phenomenon in OECD countries: a secular increase in the concentration of households with children at the upper parts of the (market) income distribution. Drawing upon cross-national microdata encompassing around 25 countries from the Luxembourg Income Studies, our analysis spans the past three decades, revealing a significant surge in children's concentration in such households across most nations, albeit with notable differences in trends and levels. We shed light on the implications of these findings, such as on the estimates of household income inequality and child poverty. We discuss the growing significance of equivalence scale adjustments as tools commonly used to adjust for "cost of children” or "household size”. More importantly, we delve into the factors underlying this concentration phenomenon, such as the age-income-fertility structure of populations, and its broader implications for redistribution and family benefits.

About the speaker:

Berkay Ozcan is Professor of Social and Public Policy in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He joined the Department in September 2011. Prior to joining LSE, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University’s Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course. He has also held visiting researcher positions at Princeton University (2006); at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) of Essex University (2007) and as a Jemolo Fellow at the Nuffield College of the University of Oxford (2015). Berkay is also part of the teaching faculty in the School of Public Policy, and a faculty associate in the International Inequalities Institute.

Berkay is a social demographer working at the intersection between family processes (divorce, marriage and fertility) and child and economic outcomes (savings, labour supply and type) to understand social stratification. Much of his work is inherently interdisciplinary, cutting across research in demography, population economics, and sociology. His published research can be found in internationally prominent journals of all three disciplines, such as Annual Review of Sociology, Proceedings of National Academy of Science (PNAS), European Journal of Population, Journal of Human Resources, Demographic Research, European Economic Review, among others. His published work has received considerable media attention and been covered frequently in newspapers such as The New York Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, and web sites such as The Huffington Post, etc. 

Berkay enjoys teaching courses at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. His main teaching is a full-year level course on ‘Welfare Analysis and Measurement’ in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) programme, convened by Stephen Jenkins.  Berkay welcomes enquiries from potential PhD students with “quantitative” interests in areas such as inequality and mobility, family processes and family policies, fertility and labor market behaviour of migrant and native populations.