Podcasts about dial podcast

¡Amigas! La salud cardiovascular y, en general, la obesidad tiene una importante implicación pronóstica en muchas enfermedades y, por supuesto, también en ginecología. Hoy queremos abordar el tema de la infertilidad y su relación con la obesidad. Además, Novo Nordisk España nos lo ha puesto fácil con “Cardiobascúlate”, una campaña que tiene como objetivo concienciar sobre la implicación del sobrepeso y la obesidad y su impacto en la salud cardiovascular. ¡Escúchalo aquí y comparte!

"Mis amigas preguntan" regresa para poner el foco en algo importantísimo como es la salud sexual. ¡Aquí se acabaron los tabúes y la timidez! La doctora Ana Villalba, junto a Saray Esteso y Flor Amarilla van a dar respuesta a dudas relacionadas con el dolor que sentimos algunas mujeres durante las relaciones sexuales, la sequedad vaginal y el vaginismo. ¿Sabías que hay casos en los que se puede solucionar gracias a técnicas de radiofrecuencias como "Empower", una plataforma de In Mode para la salud íntima de la mujer? ¡No te quedes con las dudas y dale al play!

¡Último episodio de la temporada! Para celebrar lo queridas que nos hemos sentido gracias a todas (y todos) vosotras, dedicamos este capítulo ¡a jugar! y a recordar todo lo que hemos aprendido juntas estos meses. Gracias por estar al otro lado del "play" y no olvides recomendar este podcast a tus amigas. 

¡Se viene episodio importantísimo! La Dr. Ana Villalba ha confesado que tenía muchas ganas de hablar de la endometriosis porque es una enfermedad que empeora considerablemente la calidad de vida de las pacientes y que, sin embargo, es muy desconocida. ¿Sabías que se estima que 1 de cada 10 mujeres la padecen? ¡Dale al play y comparte con tus amigas! 

¿Cuál es el método anticonceptivo que más se ajusta a tu perfil? Hay muchas opciones donde elegir. Sin embargo, es importante saber qué características tiene cada uno para poder escoger el que mejor se adapte a ti. Píldoras, DIU, anillo, parche… Escucha este episodio y entérate de cuáles son los métodos de corta duración, de larga, con hormonas o sin ellas, y de todo lo que tienes que saber para tomar una buena decisión. 

¡Tus amigas de confianza han vuelto tras una pequeña pausa! En este episodio hablamos de las enfermedades endocrinas, es decir, aquellas que alteran los ejes hormonales de nuestro cuerpo. Y, "amiguitas", resulta que el embarazo es un momento en el que tenemos mayor predisposición a ciertas enfermedades de este estilo, entre ellas, la diabetes y el hipotiroidismo. ¡Dale al play y no olvides compartir!  

¡Amigas, no demonicemos la menopausia! Es una etapa por la que todas las mujeres, inevitablemente, vamos a pasar. Por eso, la doctora Ana Villalba ha querido explicar qué es este periodo fisiológico, cuáles son sus síntomas y cómo combatirlos para que nos afecten lo menos negativamente posible. Flor Amarilla y Saray Esteso han tomado buena nota de las recomendaciones y de la terapia hormonal. ¡Haz lo mismo escuchando este episodio! 

El virus del papiloma humano ha afectado, afecta o afectará a más del 80% de las mujeres en nuestro país. El porcentaje puede resultar escalofriante, y los tabúes sobre este virus hacen que sus siglas nos asusten. Sin embargo, lo más importante para prevenirlo y acudir a tiempo al ginecólogo es estar informadas. La doctora Ana Villalba nos cuenta todo lo que debemos saber para protegernos ante este virus y qué pasa si nos contagiamos. Cuáles son los tipos más peligrosos, en qué consisten las lesiones de bajo o alto grado y qué significa eso de ''conización''. Dale al play y comparte la info con tus amigas. 

Según el INE, alrededor del 25% de los partos en España se hacen a través de cesáreas. Una intervención quirúrgica a la que se recurre cuando no es posible o seguro para la madre dar a luz al bebé a través de la vagina. Ana Villalba nos cuenta cuáles son los casos indicados para hacer cesáreas, las consecuencias que puede tener este tipo de intervención y todo lo que debemos saber sobre este procedimiento. Estés embarazada o no… ¡Atenta al tema, que nunca se sabe! 

La clamidia, la gonorrea y la sífilis han alcanzado el pico más alto de las últimas tres décadas, según el Informe de Vigilancia Epidemiológica de las Infecciones de Transmisión Sexual de 2022, publicado este pasado mes de enero. Según apunta El País, este auge está relacionado con las conductas sexuales de los más jóvenes. Más de la mitad de las personas entre 15 y 29 años han mantenido relaciones de riesgo en los últimos seis meses. La doctora Ana Villalba nos explica en qué consisten estas infecciones, cómo se tratan y qué podemos hacer nosotros para bajar estos datos. ¡Escúchanos! Pero, sobre todo, recuerda: ¡póntelo, pónselo! 

La migraña se ha convertido en una dolencia muy común de nuestra sociedad hoy en día, tal es así que la sufren más de 5 millones de españoles. ¿Pero a qué se debe? ¿tiene un componente emocional? ¿qué ocurre exactamente en nuestro cerebro cuando tenemos dolor de cabeza?  Hoy nos acompaña en MenSana, Séfora Bermúdez, bióloga experta en este tipo dolencia. No te pierdas el cuarto episodio de esta tercera temporada de MenSana, el Podcast de Cadena Dial de Desi Van Moen y Vicente Zamora. 

En anteriores episodios hemos hablado de que lo primero que debes hacer cuando te quedas embarazada es contactar con tu ginecólogo o matrona del centro de salud. Allí te darán todas las pautas de alimentación, deporte, reposo... ¿Y luego qué pasa? La Dra. Villalba nos explica todas las pruebas análisis que debemos hacernos durante el embarazo. Saray Esteso y Flor Amarilla toman buena nota, que nunca se sabe si pronto necesitarán echar un ojo a los apuntes. ¡No te lo pierdas y comparte con tus amigas! 

¿Había escuchado antes el concepto "amenorrea"? Esta palabra hace referencia a la falta de menstruación y, por lo general, se considera que es necesario estudiar el caso cuando pasan más de 3 meses sin tener la regla. En el capítulo de hoy tratamos las diferentes causas de la amenorrea y sus tratamientos. Escúchalo y no te olvide de compartirlo con tus amigas. 

Saray Esteso y Flor Amarilla se han quedado locas con el concepto "walking" epidural que hoy les ha enseñado Ana Villalba. Ya sabéis que nuestra ginecóloga favorita fue mamá en agosto y tiene muy reciente el día de su parto. En este capítulo nos enseña el manejo del dolor durante el parto y todas sus opciones: desde la epidural a la bañera con agua. ¡No tengas miedo, AMIGA, que para todo hay soluciones! Dale al play y comparte. 

Nos vuelve acompañar el Psicólogo, escritor y divulgador Rafael Santandreu. En este episodio tratamos las nuevas tecnologías, ¿cómo afectan al cerebro? ¿la multitarea es realmente saludable?, hablamos también de cómo reaccionan éstas en el cerebro de un niño/a.   No te pierdas el tercer episodio de esta nueva temporada. MenSana, un podcast de Cadena Dial con Desi Van Moen y Vicente Zamora. 

¿Habías oído antes el concepto "síndrome premenstrual"? Como vas a escuchar en este episodio, consiste en los síntomas físicos y anímicos que tienen lugar en la segunda mitad del ciclo menstrual de forma repetida. Pero aquí viene lo más importante: Para considerarlo una patología, tiene que ocurrir en la mayor parte de ciclos del año y que sus síntomas mejoren con el inicio de la menstruación o los siguientes 5 días desde que empieza. ¿Te sientes identificada? ¿Quieres ponerle solución? No te lo pierdas y dale al play. 

La búsqueda de embarazo es uno de los momentos más importantes en la vida de una persona, pero pueden surgir muchas dudas y frustración: ¿cuánto tiempo se tarda en concebir un embarazo? ¿Pueden pasar tres o cuatro meses y sigue siendo ''normal''? ¿Es bueno empezar a tomar vitaminas antes de entrar en estado gestacional o debemos esperar a que ocurra? En este episodio te ayudamos con todas estas dudas y estrenamos la sección Personal Sexshopper junto a Plátano Melón. Monica Branni, directora del área de sexología de Plátano Melón, nos da consejos para reavivar las relaciones con la pareja en el momento en el que estamos buscando un embarazo. Esa etapa en la que se recomienda tener relaciones sexuales frecuentes. ¡Diviértete y aprovecha los descuentos de Plátano Melón con el código MISAMIGAS10. Dale al play y haz click aquí: https://plmn.es/gVEnto 

¿Cada cuánto es normal acudir al ginecólogo? ¿Debe llamarme mi médico de cabecera o la iniciativa tiene que ser mía? Exploraciones, citologías, mamografías, pruebas de diagnóstico... Una cita con el ginecólogo puede detectar cualquier anomalía en una fase temprana. La prevención es clave para nuestra salud. Pero tampoco nos agobiemos. No por TODO hay que pedir cita ni darle la brasa a Ana... Entérate de cuándo sí debes llamar a tu gine y en qué ocasiones puedes quedarte tranquila. ¡Dale al play!

No te pierdas este y cada uno de los nuevos episodios de esta tercera temporada de MenSana, un podcast de Cadena Dial con Desi Van Moen y Vicente Zamora.  

¡Estamos de vuelta! Después de unos meses moviditos (que se lo digan a la Doctora Villalba que ha sido mamá), "Mis amigas preguntan" regresan para responder a todas vuestras consultas y dudas sobre ginecología y salud femenina. Para ir calentando motores, en este episodio hemos recopilados las preguntas que nos habéis dejado en nuestro Instagram: ¿Cuándo congelar óvulos? ¿Qué hacer si tengo VPH? ¿Cómo evitar las náuseas durante el embarazo? ¡Dale al play y comparte con tus amigas! 

Qué mejor forma de arrancar una nueva temporada qué con buen humor, y es que en este primer y nuevo episodio de MenSana nos acompaña Mìguel Iribar , profesional dedicado a la comedia, con más de 20 años de experiencia. Formando parte del elenco de La Hora y Media del Club de la Comedia, además de ser colaborador en el programa de historia “El Condensador de Fluzo” y director de “Showriano” para Movistar Plus.   Con él hablamos en este episodio del humor y de cómo influye positivamente en nuestro cerebro.  No te pierdas este y cada uno de los nuevos episodios de esta tercera temporada de MenSana, un podcast de Cadena Dial con Desi Van Moen y Vicente Zamora.

In this captivating episode of Turn the Dial Podcast, we dive into the fascinating world of artificial intelligence and its groundbreaking applications in the real estate industry. Our special guest, Katie Lance, an esteemed real estate marketing strategist, joins us to explore the immense potential of leveraging Chat GPT to revolutionize your real estate business. Join us as we embark on an insightful journey, unpacking the capabilities of Chat GPT and how it can enhance customer engagement, streamline operations, and provide a remarkable experience for both buyers and sellers. #RealEstateInnovation #AIinRealEstateKatie, a renowned expert in real estate marketing and social media, shares her firsthand experiences and expertise in utilizing Chat GPT to transform the way agents and brokers interact with clients. Discover how this cutting-edge tool can help you generate personalized responses, answer inquiries, and provide valuable insights, all while saving precious time and resources. #RealEstateTechnology #ChatGPTThroughout the episode, we explore practical examples of how Chat GPT can be seamlessly integrated into various real estate processes. From automating helping to write listing descriptions, to lead generation and nurturing, you'll gain invaluable insights into the power of AI-driven conversation. #AIforRealEstate #RealEstateAutomationMoreover, we discuss the ethical considerations surrounding AI implementation and how to maintain a balance between automation and genuine human connection. Katie shares her strategies for ensuring that the personalized touch and authenticity of a real estate professional are not lost in the midst of technological advancements. #EthicsInAI #HumanConnectionSo, whether you're a seasoned real estate agent looking to enhance your business or an aspiring entrepreneur seeking to harness the potential of AI, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge and practical tips to propel your success. #RealEstateSuccess #BusinessInnovationTune in to Turn the Dial as we unlock the doors to the future of real estate, revealing how Chat GPT, alongside the expertise of industry professionals like Katie Lance, can help you stay ahead of the curve and transform your real estate business into a powerhouse of innovation and success. #PodcastEpisode #RealEstateChatGPT

Último episodio de esta temporada y toca hacer balance de todos estos meses juntas. La doctora Ana Villalba ha sometido a Flor y a Saray a un test para comprobar cuánto han aprendido y si han estado atentas. ¡Escúchalo y cuéntanos en Instagram cuántas has acertado! Nos escuchamos la próxima temporada. ¡Feliz verano, amigas!

¡Esta vez le tocaba a Saray elegir tema! ¿Qué puedo y qué no puedo hacer cuando esté embarazada? Nuestra ginecóloga Ana Villalba está de casi 32 semanas y vive en su propia piel la temática de hoy por lo que nos explica todo aquello que podemos seguir bebiendo y comiendo y, por el contrario, los alimentos, bebidas y sustancias desaconsejables. ¿Sabes qué es lo primero que debes hacer cuando descubres que estás embarazada o incluso mientras estáis buscando embarazo? ¡Descúbrelo escuchando este nuevo episodio de "Mis amigas preguntan"! 

En esta ocasión, nos visita una amiga que en lugar de preguntar va a responder a las dudas que nuestras seguidoras tienen acerca de ser madres solteras. La cómica y presentadora Valeria Ros nos cuenta su experiencia desde el momento en el que se entera de que está embarazada (segundo día de confinamiento), pasando por la cesárea y los primeros meses de cuidado de su hija. Nos habla de qué es una salus y qué servicios ofrecen. ¡No te lo pierdas y comparte con tus amigas! 

¿Qué día empieza tu ciclo menstrual? ¿Lo tienes controlado? Dedicamos este nuevo episodio a hablar en profundidad de las fases que componen nuestro ciclo: fase folicular, ovulación, fase lútea y menstruación. La doctora Ana Villalba saca de dudas a Flor y Saray y a todas las amigas que han mandado sus preguntas. Escúchalo y entérate de cuándo se considera que nuestro ciclo menstrual es normal. ¡Comparte con tus amigas! 

En el episodio de esta semana hemos agrupado las preguntas que nuestras amigas tienen acerca de esas "cositas" que, en ocasiones, nos aparecen en la vulva. Tras un rápido repaso de su anatomía, nos centramos en la bartholinitis y en cómo ponerle solución, en el herpes genital y cómo evitarlo y, por supuesto, en los molestos moluscos que nos pueden llevar por el camino de la amargura. ¡No te lo pierdas y comparte con tus amigas! 

Dedicamos el episodio de esta semana a hablar del parto y, lo que hemos llamado, "sus bondades". La doctora Villalba, junto a Saray y Flor, tratan el tema de las contracciones, los dolores o el tapón mucoso. Además, te sacamos de dudas acerca de la epidural o los masajes perineales. Si estás embarazada o a punto de tener a tu bebé, este podcast te interesa. ¡Dale al play y comparte con tus amigas! 

Tener un suelo pélvico fuerte es más importante de lo que imaginamos. Cuando se debilita puede provocar incontinencia urinaria o fecal, dolor en las relaciones sexuales, molestias... Para este episodio contamos con la visita de Sandra Moreno, Fisioterapeuta experta en uroginecología y obstetricia, que nos va a enseñar cómo ejercitar nuestro suelo pélvico. Además, abordaremos el tema de su cuidado cuando estamos embarazadas ¡Escúchalo y empieza a cuidar tu suelo! 

En este episodio retomamos el tema de la reproducción asistida que tanto interesa a "nuestras amigas". La doctora Ana Villalba nos aclara las diferencias entre la inseminación artificial y la fecundación in vitro (FIV). ¿Podemos elegir al donante? ¿Cuántos embriones se transfieren? ¿En qué consiste el método ROPA? ¿Cuántas FIV puedes hacerte a lo largo de la vida? A estas y más preguntas da repuestas este podcast. ¡Dale al play y no te olvides de compartirlo con tus amigas! 

La maternidad es un mundo y cada mujer la vive de una manera diferente. Los primeros meses siempre están cargados de dudas: ¿Qué puedo comer? ¿Qué no? Pero esas preguntas también se extienden una vez hemos tenido a nuestro bebé. Por ejemplo, ¿cuándo desaparece la tripa y la línea alba? ¿Cuándo puedo volver a tener relaciones sexuales? Para darnos una visión sobre esta experiencia, hemos invitado a Conchita, cantante, compositora y mamá. ¡No te lo pierdas y comparte con tus amigas! 

El episodio de hoy mezcla la teoría y la práctica. La doctora Ana Villalba enseña a Saray, a Flor y todas las seguidoras cómo realizarse un reconocimiento de las mamas. ¿Por qué es tan importante tenerlas controladas? ¿Qué hacemos si encontramos un bultito sospechoso? ¿Qué tipo de pruebas nos hace el médico para determinar si es un tumor benigno o maligno? Todo esto y mucho más en este capítulo dedicados a las mamas. ¡Dale al play y comparte con tus amigas!

Las mujeres españolas son madres a una edad cada vez más tardía. Actualmente la edad media en la que las mujeres tinen su primer hijo son los 32,6 años. Sin embargo, no siempre es posible cumplir ese deseo de manera natural. Es por eso que la vitrificación de ovocitos es hoy en día la técnica escogida por muchas jóvenes. Mis amigas preguntan cuenta en este episodio con la colaboración de la doctora Ruth Romero, coordina la Unidad de Fallo de Implantación embrionario y aborto de repetición en Instituto Bernabeu. Junto a ella resolverán las típicas dudas que surgen en cualquier grupo de amigas que se acerque a la treintena: ¿cuándo debo congelar? ¿Es ya demasiado tarde? ¿Duele? ¿Cuáles son las probabilidades de que el embarazo llegue a término? Dale al play... ¡Más vale estar informada! 

La cándida es un hongo que vive de manera habitual en nuestra vagina. Sin embargo, puede crecer de forma descontrolada y empezar a darnos síntomas ya que destruye las bacterias buenas. ¿Por qué y cuándo nos pasa esto? ¿Qué síntomas provoca? ¿Qué debo hacer si tengo candidiasis? ¿Es grave o no debo preocuparme? La doctora Ana Villalba nos ayuda a entender esta infección que afecta al 75% de las mujeres al menos alguna vez en su vida. Además, nos alerta de lo siguiente: ''si has tenido más de cinco episodios de candidiasis en el último año, debería tratarse como recurrente''. Dale al play y di adiós al picor. 

¿Qué son, cómo se producen y cuáles son las consecuencias de tener pólipos o miomas? ¿Debo preocuparme? ¿Qué tratamiento debo seguir? ¿Dificultarán un futuro embarazo? Este tipo de lesiones son muy habituales entre las mujeres. Aunque siempre se analizan, normalmente son benignas y no debemos preocuparnos por ellas. Sin embargo, si alguna vez aparecen síntomas como sangrados abundantes debes acudir a tu ginecólogo para descartar una posible lesión. La doctora Villalba nos da las claves para entender este tipo de patologías. Dale al play para no quedarte flipando si en una consulta cualquiera te lo comenta tu ginecólogo. 

En anteriores episodios hemos abordado el tema de la píldora como método anticonceptivo de larga duración, pero no es el único por el que nuestras amigas pueden optar. En esta ocasión nos centramos en el implante subdérmico y el DIU. ¿Qué diferencias hay entre ellos? ¿Cómo afectan a nuestro ciclo? ¿Cómo se colocan? Todas estas preguntas y muchas más, las resuelve la doctora Ana Villalba junto a sus amigas Saray Esteso y Flor Amarilla. ¡Dale al play y sal de dudas!

Quieres quedarte embarazada. ¿Qué puedes hacer? Desde controlar tus ciclos y tus días fértiles y utilizar tiras de ovulación hasta cambiar algunos hábitos... Hay muchas cosas que están en nuestra mano, pero también en la de ellos. La calidad seminal variará mucho en función del tipo de vida que lleven. En el capítulo 8 de Mis amigas preguntan hablamos de la fase pre-embarazo y del primer trimestre de gestación. Entérate de para qué pueden servirte las infusiones o gominolas de jengibre. 

Prácticamente todas las mujeres han experimentado en algún momento de su vida dolores al menstruar, pero ¿cuándo debemos preocuparnos y consultar a los especialistas? La doctora Ana Villalba te explica los remedios y tratamientos para evitar los dolores, a veces incapacitantes, que tenemos con la regla. Además, Saray Esteso y Flor Amarilla repasan todos esos mitos y leyendas que circulan en torno a la menstruación. ¡Dale al play y olvídate de sufrir cada mes! 

Empezamos fuertes: la sequedad vaginal NO es normal. Si la estás sufriendo, busca una solución. No importa la edad que tengas, en ningún caso hay por qué aguantar este tipo de molestia. Repasamos los hidratantes vaginales, geles y lubricantes que puedes usar. Dale al play y entérate de qué va mejor en cada caso... ¡Para una noche que ligas, no te rayes y disfruta!  

Empecemos por el principio: el síndrome de ovario poliquístico (SOP), no es lo mismo que tener un quiste en el ovario, pero ¿qué es exactamente?, ¿cómo se diagnostica?, ¿debo preocuparme si me baja la regla cada tres meses? En España, entre el 5 y el 10% de las mujeres en edad reproductiva sufren este síndrome, lo que no quiere decir que no puedan quedarse embarazadas ni que tengan que tomar sí o sí la píldora anticonceptiva. Dale al play y entérate, ¡ya estás tardando! 

¿Tienes herpes vaginal? ¿Gonorrea? ¿Clamidia? ¿Sífilis? Quizás no, pero no sería tan raro. Los casos de este tipo de infecciones de transmisión sexual están creciendo enormemente entre la población. Según un artículo de este mes de diciembre en El País: ‘'Los hombres son los más afectados, pero en mujeres han aumentado más de un 1.000% en una década''. Los datos son preocupantes, pero la solución está casi siempre en tu mesilla de noche: usa preservativo y que tampoco se te pasen las revisiones periódicas. Dale al play y entérate de qué va el herpes que te ha salido en el labio.  

Y tú, ¿tomas la píldora? Alrededor de un 20% de las mujeres utiliza la píldora anticonceptiva como método contraceptivo. Sin embargo, en los últimos años ha aumentado el debate en torno a este fármaco. ¿Cuáles son las consecuencias del uso continuado de la píldora? ¿Cuánto tiempo antes debo dejarla si quiero quedarme embarazada? ¿Qué puedo hacer si se me olvidó tomarla un día? ¿Es la píldora realmente tan perjudicial? Resolvemos las dudas de nuestras amigas y las que hemos tenido nosotras mismas durante todo este tiempo. Dale al play y entérate. 

VPH. Esas siglas que han pasado de ser completas desconocidas a ocupar la conversación con nuestras amigas. El 80% de las mujeres hemos tenido, tenemos o tendremos el virus del papiloma humano. En el segundo episodio de ‘'Mis amigas me preguntan'' resolvemos las dudas que surgen un viernes por la tarde con tus amigas mientras tomas una cerveza: Mi novio dice que él no me ha pegado el VPH, ¿entonces por qué lo tengo si hace 3 años que estamos juntos, me ha sido infiel? Me vacuné del virus a los 17 años, ¿tengo que ponerme otra vacuna? Me han detectado VPH, ¿puedo mantener relaciones sexuales? Dale al play y sal de dudas. 

La familia no se elige, los amigos sí. Y, las reinas en elegir amigas son Saray Esteso y Flor Amarilla. Han conseguido que Ana Villalba, ginecóloga en el Hospital de Villalba, no deje de hablarles a pesar de que no paran de hacerle consultas médicas sobre ellas mismas y sus amigas: ¿estas verrugas que le han salido a María qué son?, ¿por qué a Inés le baja la regla cada 15 días? Laura ha olvidado tomarse la pastilla anticonceptiva, ¿qué debe hacer? Julia no tiene novio, está cerca de los 30 y tiene claro que quiere ser madre, ¿congela ya? Mis amigas me preguntan viene para darle una tregua a Ana y para que todas las que no tienen la suerte de tenerla en su día a día, sí tengan un lugar al que acudir para resolver sus dudas. 

In Episode 5 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast we're in conversation with Andreas Peichl, Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Finance at the University of Munich and Principal Investigator of a DIAL project looking at the impact of childhood circumstances on individual outcomes over the life-course (IMCHILD).    Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. Today, we're delighted to be joined by Andreas Peichl, Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Finance at the University of Munich, and Principal Investigator of a DIAL project looking at the Impact of Childhood Circumstances on Individual Outcomes over the Life-Course. So, welcome, Andreas, thank you very much for joining us. And I wonder if you can start by telling us a bit about what this project has been investigating and why? Andreas Peichl  0:39  So the project IMCHILD the Impact of Childhood Circumstances on Individual Outcomes over the Life-Course, had the aim to investigate how early decisions that usually parents make for their children's are really at the beginning of life, the early childhood, how these what we call circumstances for the child. So this is something that children typically cannot influence. Because these are decisions by made mostly by parents, how these circumstances affect decisions later in life. So for example, the transition to adulthood, be it educational or occupational choices, family formation, or later labour market outcomes. And the really, the idea was to see whether we find that the early childhood circumstances matter later in life. And then the next question, if this is the case, was what are the causal links? What are the mechanisms for this? And also, what can policymakers do about it if they aim at achieving something like equality of opportunity? So what can policymakers do to to level the playing field, so to say, later in life. Christine Garrington  1:54  Now, I'm interested to know as we record this conversation, COVID is something we certainly seem to be learning to live with right now, although COVID wasn't an issue, when you started this project, it certainly became one. And you've taken time to consider which children have been most affected by school closures for example. Can you tell us a bit about what you found there? Andreas Peichl  2:14  First, what we found is that in any country that we looked at, and especially in Germany, that was the main focus of this part of the analysis, but we also looked at other countries. That low achieving students, so students that were already not doing too well, in school, they were affected the most. And at the same time, students from non academic parents and lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, they were also affected the most. So sometimes, it's a combination of those two factors that are the same children, so low achieving, and low socio-economic status, but it's not exclusive. So, in general, low achieving students and lower socio-economic background, especially non-academic parents, those were the kids that were affected the most by, for example, school closures. But in general, we see that there was a large decrease in learning time for all students in school. And so basically, the whole cohort, were really affected by this. Christine Garrington  3:21  Right and, of course, as we, as we say, as we talked about learning to live with COVID, there are going to be already are, if you like longer term implications of this for children, educators and policymakers who are keen to ensure that any pre-existing inequalities don't become more deeply ingrained. Have I got that right? Andreas Peichl  3:42  Yes. So it's, it's really through it, we need to make sure that these existing inequalities don't become large. And right now, it looks as if they are becoming much larger actually. And we also see that this has long term impact. So if you lose some part of a school year, so for example, if you lose 1/3 of a school year, this, we can find or in the past, this was associated with a drop in lifetime income of 3, 4 or 5%. And so this, this can have huge implications for the generation of students affected. And so it's really important because we will have to live with COVID. And we need to make sure that we don't have to close schools, again, by investing in digital infrastructure and so on and making it possible that even when people are at home or this case, also not only for COVID, but also for other reasons that they can still participate in schooling. So this will be really important. Christine Garrington  4:46  Yes, indeed. Let's move away from COVID. One of the project's key aims was to investigate how the circumstances as we said that a child grows up in influences some of the most important decisions they make later on, you mentioned in your first answer about education and work and all of those key decisions that can take us down a certain path. Tell us a bit more about what you were hoping to get to really sort of get to grips with here. Andreas Peichl  5:13  So the starting point for research is rooted in the philosophical theories of distributive justice. And they, and also from an economic point of view, there's always the question, how to tackle inequalities. And in general, there are three ways to tackle inequalities. One is, the typical way is what we call redistribution. So this is, after all, the labour market outcomes, for example, are observed and we put a taxes and pay transfers and benefits to people to redistribute incomes. But the philosophical question then is, when we do this, how much do we want to redistribute how much inequality in the labour market do we want to have? And we know that for efficiency reasons, it's not good to have perfect equality, because then people don't have incentives to work and or to earn income. But we also know that very extreme inequality is not very good. But we don't know exactly where this optimal level is. But what we know is that there are other inequalities, where it's clear that this is something that we don't want. And this is what we in one paper, we call it unfair inequality, or this is inequality, where it's beyond your control your your poor, because there's something that you cannot influence. And this is what we wanted to investigate in this project. What are these circumstances, that children but also people later in life, have that make them for example, poor or rich? So is it the parental background, or we are in some work, we're also we're looking at the genetic endowment of people, but also other things, the places where you grow up could matter. And then it's important for policymakers, if you start tackling these inequalities already early in life, then maybe you don't need so much redistribution later in life. Because if there's a level playing field, and everybody has the same chances to achieve incomes, then typically inequalities in the labour market will be much less pronounced as they are today. So it was really the aim to see how much of the inequality that we observe today, for example, in labour earnings, labour market outcomes, how much of this can be explained by by early childhood circumstances already? Christine Garrington  7:35  And what were the key things to emerge from the work that you did? Andreas Peichl  7:38  The first thing is that, that we came up with some novel ideas and measures how to exactly measure this, this unfair bit of inequality to really disentangle this, not only in theory, but also empirically and, to some extent, also, using some some novel methods. For example, machine learning and big data ideas, in some ways or another. But also, the other thing was really trying to auto assemble also data, large datasets in paper in Sweden, really looking over several generations to see what is really the, the impact of these childhood circumstances. But what we see is really that childhood matters a lot. I mean, it's not surprising, everybody, I think, if you if you think back of your own childhood, or if you're, if you're having kids, you see how much impact parents can have have on children. And if there's inequality in let's say, how good parents are or how parents treat their children, then it's clear that this will lead to inequalities down the road. And so but I think what what's really interesting in our research was to put numbers on this to really see which inequalities seem to matter more and which maybe to a lesser extent, and then also trying to get at the main mechanisms and sort of the causal links between what it was what is it really that has an impact on on outcomes of children later in life? Christine Garrington  9:15  And you wanted to really sort of dig deep and see how those decisions that we've been talking about translate into later, later life social and economic outcomes, didn't you? What did you see there? Andreas Peichl  9:27  So yeah, we see that it's really that these these childhood circumstances matter in later life so it's, they matter directly in early childhood and then when when kids go to school or to high school, so really educational choices, but also educational performance is affected by these early childhood circumstances and then it continues, it's it's occupational choices, that matter it's but it's also we see impact on family formation - when to marry when to have children be it earlier or later in life, this is affected. And it matters for for labour market outcomes for career aspirations for, and then for for which jobs for which incomes people earn and so on. So it really matters all the way. We're also still working on projects to see whether it matters for early retirement decisions, for example, in general retirement decisions. So it seems to be that really the whole later life is affected by these early childhood circumstances. Christine Garrington  10:39  Yeah, that's so interesting. And I know that, you know, you are particularly keen to see whether you could actually, you know, really find causal links between early life circumstances and later life outcomes, you know causality, something that we know is always very, very difficult to show. But could you see that in any anything you did? Andreas Peichl  10:58  Yeah so we were looking, we were, of course, trying to establish causal links. But the perfect design research designed for to establish a causal link is to have some random allocation of the treatment and then have a control group. But it's, of course, not possible to randomly assign children to parents. So you need to come up with with different ways for for to identify these causal relationships. And typically, you can look at, at policy policy reforms and one policy that is affecting children are parental leave policies. So there's variation across countries, but also sometimes within countries. So for example, in Germany, there was a difference in these policies between former East Germany and West Germany. And what we see is children where the parents had more parental leave time, paid parental leave, when the kids were born, and were young, that these children later in life were happier. So they had a higher life satisfaction, then compared to children, where the parents didn't have as much paid parental leave, and then didn't take up as much parental leave. So it's really that also that these these policies at the very beginning at the start of the life, so like parental leave, has an impact. And so that's something where policy makers can start with. Another thing is what you can see is in schools, when you have, for example, all day schools versus only schools in the morning, or until until lunch, which is where there's a lot of variation, also within Germany, across states, you see that if you have these all day schools, there is a positive impact on on grades and also then later attending the university track. And in in the end on going to university for children. Which is basically also sort of to some extent levelling the playing field a bit because it's taking out the, the influence of part of the influence of parents on on the learning success of children. And so this is really this having this all day schools and parental leave and related policies can have an impact and can reduce inequalities later in life. So this is really important also for policymakers to think about it. Christine Garrington  13:24  Yeah, some really interesting and important findings from your project, Andrea's and I wonder for you, personally, if you like, was there anything that really surprised you or was a real standout? Andreas Peichl  13:34  So I think there were many interesting findings, and it was not completely unexpected that childhood circumstances matter. But I think what surprised me the most is that in a developed country, like Germany, it's these early childhood circumstances really matter all the way, basically until retirement. And it's and that a lot of policies are in place to with the aim of levelling the playing field, but they do not really succeed. So for example, in Germany, kids from parents with an academic background, about three quarters of these kids go to university, whereas only less than 20% of kids from non-academic background parents go to university. And it's all the schooling and the resources that are put into the system don't seem to help here. And so in many other countries, developed Western countries, it's not better in some countries like the US it's even worse. And so that's really something where I think the the policymakers in the in the next years need to put emphasis on to really make sure that we can somehow achieve equality of opportunities. Christine Garrington  14:52  Yeah, I wonder if you would say that there's anything that we've learned from your project that we really didn't know before? Andreas Peichl  14:58  We always knew that these circumstances matter, but we did not really maybe know how much and some of the causal links, but I think one thing, what we have also investigated and are still working on is also the impact of, for example, genetic endowment. And this is something where in recent years, there were advances where such data became available. And we can really see that, that this really matters for in their associations of your genetic endowment with other outcomes later in life. And this is really something to think about and what to do there. Because the policy implications there are not so clear. Christine Garrington  15:39  Yeah, that's such a fascinating area, for sure. Now, I mean, you've you've said a lot already about policy, which I think has been really, really interesting and important. But for all of those interested in tackling inequality through interventions in policy or practice, I wonder if there are any sort of essential takeaways or recommendations from this work that you would want to share? Andreas Peichl  15:59  So I think, if you want really want to tackle inequalities, much of the focus currently, I think, is on redistribution. So after all, the labour market outcomes are there and people earn incomes, but I think that's, that's really too late. Our project shows you need to start much earlier. So it's really you need to tackle it before people go to the labour market. So really education, and it's important and to to level, the playing field there. And there, especially it's the early childhood education so that other people have already shown that it's the first three or six years that are really, really important. And so for policymakers, they should put much more emphasis on, let's say, schooling and educating teachers for this early childhood education. And in a lot of countries. One thing is that child care, it's typically it's child care and not child education at these ages, as it's called, so it's making sure that the basically the kid survives the day, but it's, it's more important, so you need to really also make sure that the kids start learning something so this and then parents often have to pay for it, varying amounts depending on the country and so on. But so you should make this free for really from the beginning from starting with six, eight months old, this should be free and there needs to be enough educated teachers for the different age range. So to really start with very early ages, because typically what we see in many countries is that the children from from better off parents go to these these institutions, but not those from the from worse off parents and so it's really about the starting there to level the playing field because if you only do it later with redistribution, then it's too late and you've missed all the chances to change something. Christine Garrington  17:57  Thanks to Andres Peichl for discussing the findings and implications of DIAL's IMCHILD project. You can find out more about this and other dial research on the website at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts to access earlier, the forthcoming episodes.  

In Episode 3 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast, we are in discussion with Richard Blundell. Richard is the Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL, director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the principal investigator of a DIAL project looking at human capital and inequality during adolescence and working life. In this episode we explore the work done by this project tackling inequalities in adolescence and working life.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this episode, we're delighted to be joined by Richard Blundell, David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL, and director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Richard is also the principal investigator of a DIAL project, looking at human capital and inequality during adolescence and working life. So welcome, Richard, thank you very much for joining us today. Richard Blundell  0:40  Thank you, Christine. Christine Garrington  0:41  I wonder if you can just start by telling us a little more specifically what this project has been investigating and why. Richard Blundell  0:48  Yeah, I'd be delighted to. What we're looking at in this project is the evolution of inequality through adolescence and working life. Relating to the education streams, people choose how it affects their outcomes going forward into working life, what happens during working life, what kind of training seems to work, what routes to better jobs are for people who don't, for example, go to higher education, university. Whether training can offset some of the gender gaps that we've been seeing opening up in the labour market, and whether choices in higher education matter for future labour market outcomes. So it's very much about not the early years of school - there's another project looking at that, that runs in parallel with our project, similar investigators, we're working together with them. What we're looking at here then is from adolescence onwards, and how the inequality evolves during adolescence and working life. Christine Garrington  1:58  So one area of focus has been women and work really very, very interested in in this, you've looked at the gender pay gap, the role of childcare, on women's ability to return to work, and indeed, on the role of job training, among other things. So what would you say for you are the key things to have emerged from this particular area of work Richard? Richard Blundell  2:18  Yes, this is obviously absolutely central, the kind of pay gap between men and women and how it opens up through working life is something that's been really hard to tackle and getting behind this, what are the drivers of it, and how to address it is really key to solving some of the most important inequalities that we see in working life. We're working with researchers, mainly economists, and education researchers in Norway, in the UK and in France. That's rather good, because those three countries have rather different systems of routes through education, into work, and different opportunities for women and men as they progress through their working life. And we wanted to understand what those differences could tell us about the gender pay gap. And therefore what policies could be perhaps most useful in addressing the gender pay gap. Christine Garrington  3:25  There are a couple of key things to come out of this one there. Richard Blundell  3:28  Some of its, you know, in some sense, pretty obvious. That is that work experience is really important for pay and for earnings as you go through your career for career progression. And of course, when children come along, women spend a fair amount of time not in work, perhaps still in employment on maternity leave, but not actually gaining the work experience that turns out to be so important in career progressions. We've kind of known that. But it's become really acute, even part-time work is really not sufficient for women to keep up at work with their male colleagues. There are two kind of routes to addressing this. One is to provide good quality childcare, that can have two major benefits. One is it can provide good quality inputs and care for children, which is particularly important, especially in disadvantaged families. But it can also allow women to spend more time at work and developing their career profiles. There's also a very large importance of mothers and fathers spending time with their children. And so when children come along, it's kind of inevitable, really, that work may take second place, and that there'll be less time engaged in work experience in progression. And remember, it's exactly these years in the 20s and early 30s, where all the big career progression is made in working life, and women really fall behind there. So an alternative we've been looking at, and it turns out to be rather interesting is to work instead of on work experience, but on the human capital itself, once women come back into work. Christine Garrington  5:25  So what might that look like in reality, then Richard? Richard Blundell  5:27  So you can imagine the following scenario, a woman or a man, but unfortunately, it's particularly typically, the woman who takes time off, once she returns to work, you can imagine her engaging in a training programme, and that can make up some of the loss. Well, we weren't that optimistic about that to begin with. But we've become more optimistic for two reasons, particularly in the UK and in Norway. In Norway, using the Population Register, we can follow people, right the way through their working careers, we can follow the whole of the Norwegian population. It's an exhaustive data set on everything everybody does - their qualifications, where they're working, their family structure, and so on. And what we found is that it's particularly successful for women to who've had a child early on in their career to return to some kind of schooling qualifications, and that can have a big boost to their career profiles and address some of the gender gaps that occur. In the UK it turns out similarly, women who returned to work spend quite a bit of time in training. And we found that that training, work related on the job training, it has to be accredited, and it has to be work related, those things have a payoff. And we feel that there's real room for improving this type of training. It's all part of designing education and training routes, during your working career, that work much better than the ones we currently have. And boy in in the UK, we've been training way behind in the organisation of formal routes into education and training through your working life, especially for those who don't go to university. Christine Garrington  7:29  Now, I want to move on to talk about COVID. And obviously, although not expected when your project began, the pandemic, obviously, as well as being a terrible thing for us all did provide, however, what I'm guessing was quite a fascinating and important opportunity to look at the impacts of COVID on on people's lives in this context of inequality. So what did you, what did you get to focus on there? Richard Blundell  7:52  Once we were into the first major wave of COVID, it was clear that it was going to exacerbate a lot of the inequalities during adolescence, during education and during working life, let alone health of course. The longer run impact that we're seeing is on learning - the loss of learning, the loss of school time, the loss of engagement in learning, because of being not able to go to school, those children from deprived families have had much, much more learning loss over this period, than the privilege than children in more privileged families. It suddenly became clear that space was really important. But for learning for children, it was absolutely critical. If children didn't have a quiet place with good digital access, a good setup for engaging in online classes, then that already put them behind behind. And there's many studies showing there's a huge gradient in space, in digital access, in access to these kinds of technologies across the income and and socio economic gradient. Losses have been extremely large, up to half a year of schooling loss for many, many children. The second point is that if you're at home with educated parents, who are working from home and still have time to interact with you, you're going to get that input from them. schooling is the great equaliser. It puts children from deprived backgrounds in an environment where they can learn perhaps things that they couldn't learn at home. And that was taken away. The work on Norway and France shows exactly the same there. So learning loss, huge. This doesn't usually happen in recessions by the way. This was very, very specific to COVID. Christine Garrington  9:55  And what about when you looked at matters related to work. Richard Blundell  9:58  All on the job training, apprenticeships just didn't happen. In fact, for those in their early careers, you know - 18, 19, 20 - there was an almost complete end to apprenticeships. Apprenticeships fell back by 70% or more for that younger group, exactly the group that I was mentioning before. It's vital that we get this on the job, accredited training, because they're the ones not going to university, those going to university have been served rather better. I know from my experience here that we've at UCL, we've been keeping online classes and activities going at a pretty high level, actually. And the kind of students that we have here, can engage in that quite fully. But that's very different for a student who didn't make it to university, and who's trying to gain their experience and training through apprenticeships, there's just been no engagement. So this loss of learning has been huge. Christine Garrington  11:11  I'm interested to know whether women were worse affected than men in this context? Richard Blundell  11:16  We thought it might affect women more but in fact, overall in employment and what have you, it's been pretty neutral in the UK, that's just because of the structure of industry we have here. But it hasn't been neutral at home. We've seen, of course, mothers and fathers both having to do more childcare, because schools have been closed during lockdown, or children have been at home during self-isolation, even in periods without lockdown. But mothers of taken, have borne the brunt of the childcare at home, we followed women and families in surveys throughout COVID. And found that although childcare activities have increased for both male and female parents, there really has been an extra load on women. And again, that's going to affect their careers, and other aspects of their life going forwards. All those things that we were concerned about before COVID. And that were the absolute centre of this project have all become all the more heightened through COVID. And I think the policy recommendations that have come out of this project are very, very relevant for the post COVID world that we're now entering. Christine Garrington  12:41 Yeah, I wonder how how easy it has been? Or how difficult I guess it's probably the better question to to feed those recommendations in such a fast moving event that COVID has been and, you know, was it possible for that to feed through all of those findings, all of those important things into the policy sort of making cycle in order to try to mitigate some of those impacts? Or, or was that that must have been very challenging. Richard Blundell  13:09  For policy makers, at least civil servants have been very open, of course, to try and to figure out what's been going on. And remember, the initial policy responses, at least on simple measures of inequality have been remarkably successful. You know, we haven't ever had a recession, really, where there's been so much support thrown into the economy, of course, we're gonna have to pay for that. But some of the short run impacts, I think were mitigated, what we've focused on here, are the longer run ones, you know the the loss of learning, the loss of training, the loss of work experience, they're not showing up even yet, they're going to show up in the next few years. And it's critical, we have an opportunity now to address them. And there is a lot of interest across the whole policy world, and government and around the world. In addressing this. In fact, as part of this project, we fed into the G20 meetings last year in Rome, and a major part of our work was used to suggest a kind of coordinated approach to designing the best interventions now to address what's been going on with loss of education, and loss of work experience and training across more or less the whole developed world. Christine Garrington  14:27  Really great to hear that there's been such an appetite for findings like these important findings to feed into policy, but I guess the devil is in the detail, right? Richard Blundell  14:37  Unfortunately, these are gonna have to be huge programmes. And the thing about huge programmes is that they can be hugely expensive and not necessarily very effective. We need to get this right. We need to get these education interventions and these training interventions done in the most efficient and effective way. And that's where we can learn from other countries that do at least some things better, some things worse, we're all learning from each other. And this project which brought in, you know, Norway, which has a pretty effective system of education and training right across the board, not just for those going to university, which is where we tend to focus. And France, which has, again, a very different system. So we can learn, we can learn from that. But yeah, I see a long impact of COVID, not just long COVID. But it's hidden a bit at the moment, by the way, because of the uptick in the economy. You know, there's quite a demand for certain types of jobs, as you'd expect, when there's, you know, we're coming out of a big, big recession like that, but I'm pretty sure that that's hiding these big losses, they will turn up over time. So yeah, there's, there's a big hunger for this. We're feeding a lot of a huge amount and working a lot with Department of Education here with the Treasury on what what should be done with other policy groups. And similarly in Norway, and France. Christine Garrington  16:08  Now, I know we've talked about the labour market a bit, but I wonder whether there's anything else that you really would like to stress about that side of things, because this was a major part of your work? Richard Blundell  16:19  We had to invent things on the hoof and everyone was involved in that the furloughs remember, the furlough system didn't exist. In fact, in the UK, and in many other economies, we've not, we've not been particularly good at providing general what one might call social insurance. That is, if people fall on hard times get reduced earnings, you know, do we make up the difference? At least in the in the shortish run, we don't particularly do that very well, in the UK, we target very low incomes. We have a very targeted universal credit and benefit system. So it does prop up incomes at the bottom. And it does that actually quite well. Not always administratively perfectly, but it does it. But if you look at someone who's on a kind of lower middle income, which is the group that really was hit during COVID, there's very little support for them. Universal credit doesn't do a great job, it just doesn't replace their incomes - the furlough system did it replaced 80% of their income. And, and it was very successful in doing that, to the extent that as I said, you know, income falls and inequality increases didn't happen in the way they often do during recessions. So in that sense, these policies have been very successful. On the downside, you know, they're the things I mentioned, they've been very good at short run income support, at least for for many groups. But they've not been very good yet at addressing these losses in, in human capital investments. And work is about two things. It's about earning money today. And it's about in investing in skills that will earn you even more, or give you a better career profile, at least in the future. And it's those longer term investments that I feel, or a fear of being really left to one side. Christine Garrington  18:17  I wonder whether you've seen anything that relates to how these inequalities manifest in respect of where people live, where they come from, is there something around place that's quite important as well? Richard Blundell  18:28  We kind of knew there were geographical differences and differences by family background, it just, you know, we can see that in workings of our society. But I didn't realise how big they were. And I think it's been quite a shock to us. It's not surprising, you know, that the emphasis now is on levelling up, at least it's suggested it is in education is very important. What we found in this research, you know, looking at how well people do at school, and then into university, if they go there, and then into work is really striking, you know, some areas of the UK, for example, and this would be true in other economies as well, by the way, very few children actually make it to university. Take areas like Grimsby or Skegness those kinds of places we almost think of as left behind communities, children just don't do so well. And not only that, if they do manage to get into higher education, they often don't return to those communities. So those communities, once you look at people in work that just have many, many fewer people with higher education qualifications and skills to other areas. Let's call them the thriving areas, many of which are in the southeast or in the more successful cities. And these differences are really important because they're having huge impacts in the way people think about their well being levelling up political discourse. Christine Garrington  20:07  You talked earlier a bit about their fabulous data in Norway that you had available to you. But we've also got some great data here in the UK, haven't we, particularly when it comes to tracking young people through education? Richard Blundell  20:20  We have the National Pupil database that follows all children through school, through higher education, or through their education and training and into work right up to about the age of 28/29 now. So we're, and that will go on. So this is a remarkable, a remarkable dataset of the kind that you would typically think of finding only in a Scandinavian country. So this has allowed us to do these differences. And we can look at two children doing exactly the same courses in the same university, and just look at the differences of outcome by parental background and they're still there, they're still quite important. So parental background really matters. But so does course choices and university choices. These things, I guess we knew that have a big impact. All these things that people are doing through their their education, and early working lives and at university have a long lasting impact. And many of the differences you can take back to geography, and parental background, and the early education investments. This is really providing a real detail in what's driving the inequalities that we see at least in working, working careers. Christine Garrington  21:47  Yeah, on that note, I'd like to put a final question to you really about, you know, for those interested who in tackling inequality, obviously, including yourself and your fellow researchers, the wonderful team that you've talked about there. But for those who have responsibility for creating interventions through policy or practice, are there any essential takeaways, implications or recommendations for your project that you'd like to share? Richard Blundell  22:11  If there's something we're going to really have to address the in the UK and elsewhere it's these geographic divides. It's what is creating a lot of the political turmoil, I think, whether it be almost in any elections, we've seen the left behind areas. You know, the evidence is clear, these geographical divides, by socioeconomic background, and by areas are really important and long lasting. And it's really up to us to figure out the best ways now, to address them as quickly as possible. They've been exacerbated through COVID and so they become even more urgent, I think, in the policy debate. Christine Garrington  22:56  And I guess my final final question, is there something specific that we should be focusing on? Richard Blundell  23:03  There's a lot, but let me just pick on one, it's a kind of old topic, it's the it's the point about good jobs. You can have successful interventions for people who come from, you know, backgrounds or haven't been quite successful at education investments, you can make better choices during education. And we've seen how, with the data and work we've been doing, how that can be improved. But it's really the match of the skills, the firms and the kind of work related nature of these training investments that's so important. And what we have learned here is that, you know, small interventions on one aspect of this are not going to solve the problems. So you can think of the example of the, of just providing a job. What we've seen here is that just providing a job, say, Amazon warehouse job is not really going to help much with career profiles, you really need to match workers, develop their skills, and bring the right kind of firms that can enhance career profiles into these more left behind deprived areas. If we can get that to work, then there's great hope that we can do something for the careers and wage profiles of people who've been doing rather less well than we'd like in society. Christine Garrington  24:39  Thanks to Richard Blundell for joining us for this episode of the DIAL podcast. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org and also on the IFS website at ifs.org.uk. Much of the work of Richard and his colleagues has also fed into the Deaton Review on inequality so do take a look there as well. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts.

In Episode 2 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast, we are in discussion with Professor Hans van Kippersluis from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Hans, a professor of applied economics, is the Principal Investigator on the DIAL project, Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities, which has used innovative methods and data to explore the interplay between nature and nurture in generating health and education inequalities.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from some of the DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer term consequences might be. For this second episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Hans van Kippersluis, Professor of Applied Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. And Principal Investigator of the DIAL project, Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities - put more simply nature versus nurture. So Hans, welcome to the podcast. And I wonder if you can start by talking us through what researchers working on this project have actually been looking into. Hans van Kippersluis  0:42   What we've been doing in this project is essentially incorporating the recent availability of genetic data into social science and most prominently economic analysis. And so most of our work has focused on the interplay between genes and the environment. So in the introduction, you mentioned nature versus nurture, but actually more accurately, what we're doing is nature and nurture jointly into how they shape essentially education and health outcomes. And I think this is also the main innovation of our project, because biologists have studied nature before; social scientists have  of course, extensively studied nurture, but not many have studied the interplay, the interaction between the two. And I think this was sort of the main innovation for why we got the funding some five years ago. And so what we have done is mostly studying this interplay. But along the way, we have also made some methodological contributions to a field which is very new. Then we've also used genetic data to test all their theories, and also, I think, enrich the framework of equality of opportunity. Christine Garrington  1:35   Yeah, fantastic project. And as you've just said, you've made unprecedented use of genomic as well as survey data in the research, tell us a bit more about the information that you've been able to access? And how you've been able to use it? Hans van Kippersluis 1:47   Yeah, sure. So the interesting thing is that more and more social science datasets, so data sets that have been traditionally used by social scientists, and these are mostly extensive surveys,  are now collecting DNA information from their respondents. And this is often from blood or saliva. And what they did is basically, so more than 99% of DNA is the same across human beings. And so what we are using is only this remaining less than 1% of the variation. And these are called snips. And snips are points of your DNA that differ across human beings. And there's roughly 1 million of them. And so what we do, basically also other people have done is sort of aggregating these tiny effect sizes into an index. And this is called the polygenic index. And this is telling us something about your genetic predisposition towards a certain outcome. And this is quite interesting, because this data, this new variable, essentially can be added to existing datasets. And so we have a wealth of information that has been collected in the past on surveys on existing data. And then we simply add one indicator, one new variable. This is telling us something about people's genetic predisposition. And just to be clear, this is not like a deterministic variable. It also exhibits quite a bit of measurement error and noise. But at the group level, and that's what we have been doing is it sort of does tell us something about your genetic predisposition, and it can help us understand how certain life outcomes like education, like health, are shaped by the interplay between your genetic predisposition and your environment. Christine Garrington  3:07   Indeed, let's talk a little bit now then about some of the research findings. And you know, what's come out of this now, one piece of research we've spoken about this actually, in an earlier podcast episode, actually drew links between mothers smoking in pregnancy and their baby's birth weight. I wonder if you can just sort of summarise that for you what actually came out of that what we learned Hans van Kippersluis 3:28   this was work with with my PG students, Rita Dias Pereira and colleague Cornelius Rietveld. And for birthweight we knew that maternal smoking is one of the key environmental risk factors. And we also knew from genetic studies that genes matter in determining your birth weight. And so what we did here was essentially looking at the interaction between the two. So can higher polygenic indices protect against maternal smoking? And the answer, unfortunately, perhaps was no, in the sense that we found very, very little interaction between genes and the environmental exposure of maternal smoking. So it seems that both matter, but there doesn't seem to be any meaningful interaction between the two. So that was, to some extent surprising, but on the other hand, also perhaps logical in the sense that maternal smoking is apparently such a devastating environmental exposure that even higher genetic predisposition cannot protect you from this. Christine Garrington  4:16   Yeah, really interesting. And anybody who's interested in that can listen to Rita actually discussing that in series three, Episode Seven, of our DIAL podcast called Mums Who Smoke and their Baby's Birthweight. So do check that out if you're interested to know a little bit more about what Rita and all of the all of your colleagues did. Now, there have been some interesting findings Hans from the project around the role of genes in a child's education and specifically around parental investments. I wonder if you can explain a bit more about what you were looking to understand there.  Hans van Kippersluis 4:50   Yes, yeah, so this is one of my favourites studies. It's joint work. Also with another PG student   Muslimova and my colleagues Stephanie von Hinke, Cornelius Rietveld and Fleur Maddens. And the starting point there was actually a theory of human capital formation from economics. And it dates back all the way to the work of Nobel laureate Gary Becker. And one of the crucial assumptions in that model is that parental investments are complementary to your genetic endowments. And this assumption is actually very hard to test because often we do not have a good measure of endowments. And if we do, it may already be contaminated by parental investment. So many people, for example, use birth weights. But of course, well as we just learned, maternal smoking may have a large effect on your birth weight, so it's not fully free of your parents' behaviour. And the other thing is that your parental investments often respond to endowments. So if you have a child with specific needs, of course, parents respond to this. So the problem of testing this assumption is that endowments and investments are actually always very closely entangled. And that makes it very hard to test whether they are complementary or not. So what we did here was using one's genetic endowment, and that is actually has a very nice property and that it's fixed at conception, so it cannot be affected by your parental investments. And what we did was using the child's birth order to proxy for parental investments. So what we know from earlier studies is that firstborns tend to get more parental attentions on average than later points. So this is one after all, because they have undivided attention until the arrival of later borns. And this extra parental investment is actually independent of your endowments. It simply derives from the fact that you have more time if you have one child as opposed to multiple children. So what we did in this study is looking within families comparing siblings that were first born to later borns, and then further analysing whether this firstborn advantage was stronger for firstborn siblings who randomly inherited the higher polygenic index for educatio. I think this was a nice, very unique setting to test this theoretical assumption that parental investments are complements to genetic endowment. Christine Garrington  6:45   What did you find here? Then what do we learn about the role of genetics in affording in affording certain children advantages later on in life? Hans van Kippersluis 6:53   So what we found was that indeed, the firstborn effect seems to be stronger for siblings who randomly inherited higher polygenic indices. And I think this is evidence in favour of this theoretical assumption of complementarity between endowments and investments. And it also means that your genetic predisposition cannot just give you a direct advantage. But it also means that this advantage may be kind of amplified by your parental or your teacher investments. And this complementarity, I think also suggests once again, that for disadvantaged children, so the other side of the coin, we need to start very, very early and follow up these early investments also with data investments to make them as productive as possible. Christine Garrington  7:29   So Hans, some fascinating research and findings. I wonder if there's been a standout or surprising finding for you from the project.  Hans van Kippersluis 7:36   I  think methodologically, what we've learned is that there's still a world to explore in terms of using genetic data in social science, because what we have seen is that polygenic indices can be a great tool to improve our understanding of the things we just talked about. But I think the way we use these polygenic indices, are shall I put this sort of a bit naive, in some sense, because what we do is we first construct a score or an index by regressing an outcome on all of these 1 million individual genetic variants. And as you can imagine, if you do these 1 million regressions, then it will be a lot of noise in  these coefficients, and these estimates also come with some uncertainty. And what is surprising to me, what I've learned is that many researchers simply sort of seek to use this polygenic index as if it's some kind of a transferable and deterministic index. And there's hardly any account in the literature on the uncertainty in this index. And I think what we have done in one paper is actually showing how this uncertainty is sort of leading to different conclusions, because what we did is basically looking at the polygenic index for cardiovascular disease. And in cardiovascular disease, more and more people are using these polygenic indices, this genetic data for personalised decisions regarding, for example, the use of statins. And what we did was sort of constructing six different polygenic indices using different discovery sample using different methods of constructing this polygenic index. And what was fascinating and actually maybe astonishing to see is that only 6% of the individuals are in the top quintile of the polygenic indices, if you look across these six different ways of constructing the same polygenic index. And I think this is fascinating, because it shows that even though polygenic indices are now increasingly being used, apparently it matters a great deal about how you construct these things. And this is one thing we have shown, I think this is quite remarkable, and also an important methodological contribution. Christine Garrington  9:19   A really important contribution to how this research might develop in the future. Right, absolutely. And then just finally, Hans, I wonder what this all of this work tells us about the interplay between genes in our environment, or, as we've talked about nature and nurture, not nature versus nurture, in better understanding and in tackling inequality. Hans van Kippersluis 9:41   So it's very hard, I think, to give sort of direct policy leads or implications, but there's a few leads. One thing is that I think we need to start early. We knew already that inequalities arise early in life. And I think this focus on genetics gives us yet another clue that it's very important to start early. And also because of the work I mentioned about complementarities, it's very clear that later investments are more effective if the person has had already more investments early in their life. So that's clearly one more general policy implication, I think. And I think our work is also showing how sort of genes and environment shaping jointly inequalities. And I think this has important implications for the discussions about equality of opportunity. I mean, if you look at politicians across the entire political spectrum, everybody seems to be agreeing that equality of opportunity is a great thing, and that your health and your income should not depend on your parental background. But let me ask two questions about this. One is, what about your genes? There's hardly any discussion about whether inequalities that are deriving from genetic advantages or disadvantages are fair or not. And what we've also shown in this project is that parental background seems to reinforce genetic advantages. So even if you believe that parental background should not be leading to inequalities and your genes may, then how do you treat the interaction between the two? So I think we should have a clear discussion here a societal discussion about what is fair here. And I think that's why our research is very important, because 30 years studies have already shown that people's preferences for redistribution, for example, depends strongly on whether they perceive inequalities as fair or unfair. So I don't think we are political activists here. But I do think that showing how genes and the environment jointly shape outcomes such as health, education, income, but really help people to make up their own mind as to what they regard as fair or unfair inequalities. Christine Garrington  11:23   Hans thank you very much some some big advances here. But still some big questions to answer, I guess is the is the summary but fascinating work and thank you for taking time to share it with us. So finally, thanks to Hans van Kippersluis  for discussing the findings and implications of DIAL dial project Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities. You can find out more about this and other dial research on the website at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts to access earlier and forthcoming episodes.    

In Episode 1 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast we're in discussion with Professor Kjell Salvanes and Dr Helen Wareham to talk about the impact of inequality on the lives of children. Kjell is the Principal Investigator on Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities while Helen is a Research Associate on the project Social InEquality and its Effects on Child Development.    Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to inequality over the lifecourse. In Series 4 we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this first episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Professor Kjell Salvanes and Dr. Helen Wareham to talk about the impact of inequality on the lives of children. Kjell heads up a project called Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities, while Helen is a research associate on the project, Social InEquality and its Effects on child Development. So Helen, let's start with the work that you and your team have been doing, looking at how young children are getting on and where inequalities might be occurring. I wonder if you can just start by explaining really a bit more about that the main focus of your project. Helen Wareham  0:50  So the main focus of SEED, that's the acronym we have the project is to identify the mechanisms that social inequalities have on children's, particularly their oral language development, and where we can try and identify what patterns there are in those inequalities, and the impact that it has, and whether those continue throughout children's lives, and into adulthood as well. We're a team of around 20 researchers, and we're quite a broad range of specialists. So we have everything from speech therapists, developmental psychologists, but also medical staff, so ENT, ear, nose and throat specialists. And we're spread across a number of countries, as well. So there's a sort of focus around the countries involved in the project. So that's Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, but also how we can look across those different countries and with broader collaborations with teams in France, the USA and Australia as well. Christine Garrington  1:44  So tell us a bit about what your team of 20 researchers in all these different countries has been actually doing over the last few years. Helen Wareham  1:51  In the three main countries for the project, we have really rich cohort data. So that's where people have been interviewed they've there's been kind of assessments that have happened with children, quite often from birth, and then they've been tracked at regular points throughout their lives. And these create really rich data sources. So we can look at what happens in children's lives and how that then changes over, over time. Because we have this rich data, we're able to look for really complex novel methods to try and understand the impact that inequalities have on children's lives over time. And a lot of the work in our projects has been driven by PhD students. They've been looking at everything from the impact of slight and mild hearing loss on children. So my colleague Lisanne who's based at Rostam University in the Erasmus Medical Centre there has found that there's a significant impact on behavioural and school performance in children where they have the kind of slight or mild hearing loss, that's all just so clinical, but just enough that it's obviously then impacting their later life. And then my colleagues, Natalie and Wei have been looking at the interactions between parenting behaviours, and children's language and behaviour development. And then my colleague, Claudia has been looking particularly at instances of sort of poverty and how that impacts on children's language development. Christine Garrington  3:12  I know you've been very successful as well Helen in engaging more broadly with this work outside of the research and the academic community. Helen Wareham  3:20 While we've kind of been doing a lot of this very in-depth research, we've also been able to engage more broadly with policymakers. Right at the start of this project, through our partnership with the Liveness Association, we were able to meet with some members of the EU Commission to discuss our project. We were given the opportunity as well to comment on some early care and education guidelines that the Commission we're working on, and that that's since then been published. So well, yeah, quite a bit of over the last few years I suppose. Christine Garrington  3:50  So I guess what we're keen to know, what many people will be keen to know, that is, after all of this work, what would you say are sort of the key things that have emerged that that maybe we didn't know, before, now, you've had this opportunity to delve so deeply into these issues. Helen Wareham  4:04  There's sort of three key things that have come out of this. One has been, we've really been able to look really in depth at some of these relationships to kind of get an idea about how some of these relationships work. Some of the nuances I said, you know, about parental behaviours and interactions with children. And that's been great. But then also, I think one of the really key things we found is just how persistent inequality is, and how significantly it impacts on families and then children's lives and it's a really it's not just a persistent relationship. It's it's deeply entrenched, in that persistant-ness, it's very slow to change that. So when we think about inequality, we often think we can make a change and it will kind of happened within someone's lifetime, when we're looking at, you know, what happens over the course of a child's life. But actually to resolve certain inequalities, we're really looking at some of this being a multi-generational approach that no matter how good a start, we sometimes we're able to provide all the interventions we can deliver, that isn't going to necessarily manifest in that child's lifetime, it could be two, three generations later. Christine Garrington  5:18  Now that's all really interesting. I think we'll come back and talk about that a bit more in a second Helen. And Kjell, I'm guessing that quite a lot of what Helen has just said resonates with, with you. And I know there's a real synergy between what Helen and her team have been looking at and what your projects been investigating. So let's just take a step back here and get you to talk us through what it what it is that you've been trying to get to grips with. Kjell Salvanes  5:39  The background for our project is, you know, the increased inequality that we're seeing in many countries. What we are trying to do is to understand, you know, increase in the socio-economic gradient, as they say, you know, the difference between different groups of people. And in particular, we're interested in inequality, showing up both in education, but also, in terms of behaviour, you know, crime and stuff like that. Christine Garrington  6:04  Tell us a bit more about some of the specific things you were looking at, and why. Kjell Salvanes  6:07  Precisely we try to understand how shocks in a family are affecting their children in different stages of the life of a kid. The other part is, the importance of public policies, let's say day-care policies, family leave policies, and how that can affect the development of children, and especially what economists call investment in human capital or education or their skills. And also how the dynamics in the families how that is important how, you know, let's say there is an income shock, because Dad loses his job, how the dynamics in the family being changed, and the role or the mom and the dad, in affecting the children. Christine Garrington  6:50  I know, you have a fantastic team, largely economists from leading institutions in Norway, France and the UK, but you're interested in broader things, including health, you know, particularly around child development and, and outcomes. So tell us a little bit more about how you've gone about looking into these questions. Kjell Salvanes  7:10  I mean, we are using data - very detailed registered data from Norway, and France, and also partly now from the UK. And we are combining these type of approaches using registered data, which sort of consists of generations of families, and also combining it with experimental work, interventions, and also surveys. Christine Garrington  7:35  and what does all this fabulous data and these methods enable you to do? Kjell Salvanes  7:40 You can look at the whole development of kids from, you know, pre birth basically to, then we can look at adults, but you can also look at up to, let's say, 60. A lot of what we have been doing is to try to distinguish between the impact of something that is happening early on. It could be a negative shock, it could be policy intervention, or it could be parental decisions early on preschool, you know, middle years of schooling, and then early teenage. We see a lot of differences, you know, before they start school. And then the question is how this interacts with what is happening in the, in the early and later school years. We looking at different types of skills. I mean, you know, so it could be, you know, more the cognitive types of school skills, but it could be also socio emotional skills, how you you know behave. Christine Garrington  8:36 Indeed and can you talk us through what what's emerged that you think is of particular interest? Kjell Salvanes  8:42 You know, one of my colleagues at UCL Gabriella Conti, her work and partly together with us have been looking at early health outcomes for kids, and how that can predict the performance of kids when they are teenagers, but also as adults. So I think that part of the project has been very important. The second thing that I will speak a little bit is that, you know, one of the teams in in Paris, they have looked at training programmes for the children in daycare. So they have actually looked at an intervention among daycare teachers, and trying to set up a programme where they can teach language acquisition skills, you know, from the age of three months to three years. And that also seems to be have had a very positive effect, because, you know, language skills, or skills at the age of five seems to be very predictive of what is going to happen with children as adults. And the third thing that, you know, we'll talk a little bit about a project that I've done myself where we look at the kids growing up that was born to teen moms, which is a big issue in many countries. In the UK, for instance, I think, you know, more than 20% of the kids are being born to teen moms. And how that effect their adult acquisition of human capital and how they how well they perform in the labour market. And what we find there. And I think this is a new finding is that it's not only the mom that is important, I mean, usually in the literature, you find that this has a negative on average effect on the kids in their later life. What you find here is that the role of the dad is also extremely important. The matching, so to speak in the, in the non-marriage market here, you know, who they get the kids with, is also not without selection. So the selection of kids, for these kids is important. And the role of the dad is also extremely important, not only the mums, which of course, has strong policy implications. Christine Garrington  10:54 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, on that note, I'd sort of quite like to ask you both really, whether there's a standout finding from, you know, the wide range of research that both projects have done that you think that everyone who's interested in tackling inequality from as early as we possibly can, should know and understand. Kjell you want to kick us off? Kjell Salvanes  11:14 Yes, I mean, we put together these three teams for some reasons, because the let's say the family policies differs a lot across these three countries. The Norway is one of the Scandinavian countries have a very active family, family policies, parental leave since the mid 70s, and stuff like that, and also daycare coverage 100% now. France is a little bit in between and you know, and not so active family policy in the UK, I have to say so. So there are differences. And what we see is that the impact of family policies on child development seems to be very important. And I think that also has, of course, clear policy implications. Christine Garrington  11:58 Yeah, Helen, is that I'm guessing that's something that possibly resonates with with you and your project as well. But is there one particular thing that you think is, it's really important that everybody takes away from all of this? Helen Wareham  12:10 Yeah I think, particularly from our projects, and I think Kjell has been sort of saying this as well is about how important it is to realise that right from the start of children's lives, it's a vital time, you know, inequality doesn't wait. It's right there from the start. So I think, in tackling inequality, knowing and understanding that the inequalities that are there, in families, in parents to be, are then transmitted to their children, and that then affects children's later life outcomes. And I think what we've really learned from our work is we've learnt lots of sort of small pieces of information about the kinds of activities parents can be doing, particularly relationships in child development, you know, kind of between the relationship between children's language development and their socio emotional development. But ultimately, those things are mediated, they're heavily influenced by wider household opportunity and resource that's available. And if we aren't able to ensure that people have those opportunities to interact with their children, to spend time with them to be able to do activities with them. Either because their economic situation doesn't allow it, or they simply don't have the space and resources available to do those kinds of play activities, and talking and reading with children then continues the cycle of inequality. Christine Garrington  13:39 Yeah, no, that's so interesting and important. And I wonder, so what are the wider implications of these findings? So we talked a lot here about, you know, about policymaking and policy makers and early intervention. But for those sort of seeking to design those interventions to tackle inequality, or even practitioners working in the fields, such as teachers in schools, who may also have a role to play in this, you know, what are the takeaways for them? Helen, you go first, and then I'll move to Kjell. Helen Wareham  14:07 I think if I'm honest, this is actually quite a difficult question to answer at the minute. Because inequalities, you know, we see the landscape of inequalities, you know, I think the acronym DIAL referring to inequalities as dynamic, I think, is really useful and interesting, because inequalities react to global events. Which we, you know, we've experienced over the last few years and are continuing to see, but kind of inequality at the centre of that doesn't really change and it hasn't really changed. And I think that's something that's really important to acknowledge that we understand a lot about the nuance and the mechanisms and how inequalities affects people's lives. But there's still a fundamental issue at the centre of that about the key factors of inequalities that haven't changed. And I think then that means as a, as a researcher, I can sort of provide evidence about some of these relationships and even put together interventions that will help children catch up with their language development at a later point. But it doesn't address the fundamental issue. That kind of we've created as a society, you know, where parents aren't able to spend time with their children, because they're having to work three in four jobs. So you know, working 14 hour days, to ensure that children have a roof over their heads and are fed. I think it's a lot to ask of teachers, there's a lot of strain on teachers already know, they're kind of going above and beyond, when I think schools are struggling to even heat classrooms. It's hard to know kind of what to put out there as what policymakers can be doing and practitioners as interventions, when I think we have a kind of responsibility to address those fundamental needs. So I think that means as a researcher, what I have to do is kind of advocate for that greatest viable change. And let people know the you know, the evidence is there of what interventions we can deliver. But we've got to get people to a point where they can, you know, parents can spend time with their children, and talk to them and read to them. And children can go to school, and be in an environment where they're able to accept and receive learning, and people can go to work and feel that they can go and do the job and not have so many other concerns. Christine Garrington  16:24 Yeah, absolutely. No quick fix no simple answers, right? And Kjell I'm guessing again, a lot of that probably feeds into your thinking too. Kjell Salvanes  16:34 Yeah, you know, so at least partly, what I tend to find is that there has been strong improvements both along the differences across, you know, in terms of education, you know, from different children from different backgrounds, and also in terms of income. So there has been a lot of improvements, I think that is important to say, but are some areas where, we haven't seen so much gains, or there has been you know, it's more difficult, and especially among the very poor, you see also in the Nordic countries, that seems to be very difficult to get them sort of above a certain level. And so there's a lot of persistence at the bottom across generations. And also at the top, there's a lot of persistence, you know, the rich, do well independent and the poor do not do that almost independent of policy. So I think, to better understand these two mechanisms, and especially, you know, for the poor, what is it exactly? Why do don't they take more education? Why do they don't perform better in the labour market? What is it exactly? Is it lack of resources? Or is, do they have different expectations? They don't think that they can do it or is it information, they don't know about it, or they know about it, but cannot do anything about it, let's say because of the restrictions that Helen mentioned. So I think this is the area where I think we need much more to understand much more what's going on. Christine Garrington  18:06 That brings me very nicely to my final question for you both, which is if you'd like is whether you have a feel for what needs to happen now? I mean, you've both alluded to it. But you know, both in terms of research, but in terms of how do we move things forward? How do we get to a point at which change can happen? And that's a difficult one I know, Helen. Helen Wareham  18:25 It is a difficult one, because I think there's a lot of structural inequalities that exist. And those are difficult to change. And I think that that's thing as a sort of longer term view about what needs to happen. Now, and I think we are kind of globally at a very critical point. The pandemic, in particular, I think has highlighted to people the need for certain changes to happen, climate change has been another one where there's a real need and call for action. And for larger, more structural changes to happen. And I think that can go a long way to addressing kind of very fundamental structural inequalities. And that's it, it's, it's that need to look on a longer term beyond kind of quick wins and marginal gains. And that's where I think the research around child development, first couple of years of children's lives are so pivotal, an investment and a shift towards ensuring that children have the best possible start they can in life doesn't initially pay off. It's a long term strategy. But it means in 10-20 years time, what we get is a huge payoff in terms of a happier, healthier, more skilled workforce, and a real step towards breaking some of those inequalities. I think a shorter term thing about what could happen right now is I think the education gap we have particularly around those children who have kind of recently finished their kind of national standard level of education during the pandemic, you know, we've seen a widening in that education gap. Ensuring that as many children as possible have achieved a national standard of education, I think is is really key because we know that achieving that will create a shift and a potential to kind of open up opportunities for children to be able to go on to further study and improve their education or to be able to enter the workforce at a better point than we are seeing. So I think there's a real potential, there's a short term acting to make sure that the children, particularly those affected by the pandemic have been supported and are achieving at least a national standard of education. Kjell Salvanes  20:33 And one of the things that sort of resonates what Helen is saying is that it has become clear that differences among kids is seen very early on, you know, before they start school. So that means that the family and early years are extremely important. And I think that was not the focus, let's say 10 years ago, it is the focus now. And I think we need to understand much more about that. So that is one thing you see also increased inequality, not only, you know, in a socio-economic dimension, but also regionally. Certain areas, let's say in England, Southern England, around London, you know, are prospering. I mean, while other places, let's say in the north of England, and the same thing in Norway, in the North of Norway and other places, they sort of are falling behind. So I think that dimension is also very important. It's not one thing that's going on the different things that are going on, and I think this is also has high has important implication for economic policies, you know, to stabilise those areas. Christine Garrington  21:36  Thanks to Kjell Salvanes and Helen Wareham for discussing what's been learned from their respective DIAL projects on this episode of the DIAL podcast, which was presented by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. You can find a range of resources including working papers, journal articles, policy briefs, podcasts and blogs on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org.

In Episode 16 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast we're discussing ability grouping in UK primary schools and how it affects children's enjoyment of certain subjects. Our guest today is Queralt Capsada-Munsech from the University of Glasgow, who as part of DIAL's LIFETRACK project has been looking at primary school children's enjoyment of English and Maths at age seven, and later at age 11 to see whether ability grouping positively or negatively impacts their enjoyment of those subjects.  Does ability grouping affect UK primary school pupils' enjoyment of Maths and English? is research by Vikki Boliver and Queralt Capsada-Munsech, and is published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're talking about how grouping children by ability at school affects their enjoyment of certain subjects. Our guest is Queralt Capsada-Munsech from the University of Glasgow, who as part of DIAL's Life Track project has been looking at primary school children's enjoyment of English and Maths at age seven, and later at age 11 to see whether ability grouping positively or negatively impacts their enjoyment of those subjects.   Queralt Capsada-Munsech  0:29  There are people who are advocates of ability grouping, and their main argument is usually that high ability pupils improve their attainment, while there is no detriment in lower ability, once their academic performance mainly. But you know, the opponents in the general debate of ability grouping, what they say is that high ability students only do marginally better when they are grouped with a, yeah with a group of students that are homogenous to them. While lower ability ones are the ones that are substantially worse off from these ability grouping. And what we have seen mostly in previous research is that there is the main mechanism that we call that is the self-fulfilling prophecy of low attainment that you know, because you are grouping the low ability grouping and people, and students are aware of that. So they just know that they are not doing as well. And they continue to do more poorly while those that are in the high ability grouping, so they think better of themselves. And that leads them to better academic achievement. And usually, the way it has been measured has been based on what we call academic self-concept that basically is asking students, how good are you at maths, at English or at school in general?  Christine Garrington  1:48  So talk us through some of the policy context here - ability grouping as an education policy. Queralt Capsada-Munsech   1:53  In the gaze of the UK ability grouping was encouraged by the New Labour governments in the 1990s and in the 2000s. And the main idea was that it would raise standards generally, with higher grades in brightest kids in particular, that was something that was quite influential in past decades. And that had clearly an effect in policy because, you know, the prevalence of grouping practices still remains in place. And it increased quite a lot for the past few years. And we see in the UK, even that ability grouping is becoming increasingly common in early years, you know, at ages three and four and even in Key Stage One ages five to seven was, which was something that we didn't see in the past. While you know, in the 1990s, there were fewer than 3% of primary schools who reported that they were streaming students by 2008 16% of seven year olds, were being streamed by ability for all subjects and 26% were being taught in ability sets for English and Math so that's quite the change. Christine Garrington  3:01  What was it for you that you wanted to look at exactly about the way in which children are grouped by ability at primary school? What was it you wanted to look at and why? Queralt Capsada-Munsech   3:10  Empirical evidence what did show us that at least for the UK suggested that there weren't many benefits of practising ability grouping. Mainly at the secondary level was most of the studies and it did little to raise the school's standards, and it was more detrimental for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. And it was through that, you know, measured ability at the early ages is predictive of ability group placement. But so were also a lot of socio-economic indicators. So there were also a few mechanisms, you know, that people were looking at. So for instance, teaching practices or teaching learning environments. So the reason why this happened, that it was more detrimental for some instruments to the individual than others because teacher quality is correlated with ability grouping, meaning that mainly you know, teachers that are more qualified, more experienced tend to be a placed with a high ability grouping, while less experienced in the lower one, which maybe should be the opposite. But also because of students self-perception, so they internalise these labels of consequences for their self-esteem. We could see that there were many studies that had been undertaken at secondary level, but not that many at the primary level. So what we want to talk that was that academic enjoyment so that it would be different question like, how much have you enjoyed reading or doing number work or English or maths more, more precisely. Christine Garrington  4:45  So why was it important to look at how much children enjoyed subjects? What was it about that particular concept or idea that was was important in your research? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  4:56  Academic self-concept, the question how good you are at? It's informed by students awareness of their test scores or their ability group placement, but it's also a relational construct, you know how good you are compared to the rest of your pupils in your group or in your class. While academic enjoyment, we thought that it was a more an intrinsic motivation and is more of a personal preference, you know, you might like or dislike reading, even if you are very good at English or not. So it's more of an independent one. And it's less relational. So it's not that you enjoy reading compared to your peers, it's more they do you enjoy it more? Yes or no, or to what extent. Christine Garrington  5:39  So talk us through what you actually did. Queralt Capsada-Munsech  5:40  The question that we wanted to look at was looking okay, for instance in primary school at age seven, how much did pupils enjoy Maths or English and school in general? And then to look later on, you know, at age 11, before going to secondary school, how much they enjoy again, Maths, English and school in general. And to see to what extent it had changed from age seven to 11, depending on the ability group that they were in. So we were expecting that, okay, maybe your academic enjoyment of Maths might be different to those that are in the top or bottom ability group. But our hypothesis was that, theoretically, there is no reason for people to change how much they enjoy or not enjoy reading, for instance, from age seven to eleven, regardless of the relative group they are in. Christine Garrington  6:38  So where did you get your information from? And why was it a good source of data to help you address these questions that you were interested in? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  6:47  So we use one of the cohort studies that are called, that its the Millennium Cohort Study. But basically, it's a longitudinal survey that follows about 19,000 people born in the UK in 2000 and 2002, approximately. You have the same people, the same individuals, and they have been surveyed throughout their lifetime. What it was important for us in order to make this comparison is that we would have that data about the same individuals, but also that we would have like similar questions at two points in time. So in this case, for instance, because if we want to check if there is a change or not in academic enjoyment, from age seven to eleven, we needed to have this very same question of academic enjoyment at those two points in times. And in addition, obviously, we had some information about ability grouping. And so. Christine Garrington  7:41  And when it came to this question of whether being grouped by ability did in some way influence whether a child liked a subject or not, what did you see? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  7:50  If we start just with the descriptive statistics, we already saw, obviously, that there were some differences. So maybe it's worth starting by saying that, you know, overall, there was quite a lot of academic enjoyment among students. So the majority of them like a lot Maths, or reading or English, and most of the students so in most cases above 35%, were placed in the high ability one. And students that were placing the low ability one was usually smaller numbers like below 20%. That already gave us an idea of the distribution. But more importantly, yeah, when just looking at some bivariate descriptive statistics, we could see that those that are in high ability groups, tended to enjoy more Maths, for instance, than those that were placed in the low ability group. And that has stayed like, quiet similar when we look at it both at age seven, and eleven. So that's something that we could see just from the descriptive statistics. Christine Garrington  9:00  Now you had some very specific findings around maths didn't you? I wonder if you can talk us through what it was exactly that you saw there. Queralt Capsada-Munsech  9:07  Being placed in a lower rather than a high ability group at age seven, depress the probability of coming to enjoy continuing to enjoy or even to increasing your enjoyment of Maths by age eleven. And that stayed like this way even after controlling for you know, students measured ability in Maths, sex and social background at age seven. So we found that yeah, really being placed in ability grouping has an influence in your academic enjoyment of Maths. However, we didn't find quite the same for English and school in general. So, you know, there was this tendency, but once we control for socio-demographic and socio-economic variables, the results weren't statistically significant. So, we would say that, it's mainly for maths that we would find some differences or some effects of ability grouping. Christine Garrington  10:05  Yeah, really, really interesting, though, and I'm gonna take you right back to the beginning of our conversation when you were saying, you know, just how much policy interest there is in this area around, specifically around education policy. What do you feel that we must take away from from this piece of work? And do you think there are any key takeaways specifically for education policy and practice? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  10:25  Overall, I would say that our findings are very much in line with much of the existing research, which indicates that ability grouping is detrimental to those judged to be of lower ability. And at least we find it in relation to Math. So it's something to be worried about. And ability grouping by measured ability has a negative influence for those that label as that, as lower ability. And we can see now that it's for both for academic self concept this idea of how good I am at maths, but also for academic enjoyment is like how much do you enjoy maths? So that can be detrimental if you are put in a lower ability group. Christine Garrington  11:08  Okay, so that's the key sort of takeaway message, but what recommendations might you have in this area then? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  11:14  We are aware that it's difficult to be in a classroom and that we don't mean that because they are doing ability grouping they are bad teachers or bad educators. But yeah, I guess it's something that we'll have to continue exploring. And while some parts of ability grouping might work for some students or for some teachers overall, I wouldn't encourage the policy of ability grouping, at least in the UK. Christine Garrington  11:45  Does ability grouping affect UK primary school pupils' enjoyment of Maths and English? is research by Vikki Boliver and Queralt Capsada-Munsech, and is published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. Thanks for listening to this episode of the DIAL podcast, which was presented by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. You can find out more about all the DIAL projects at dynamicsofinequality.org.

In Episode 15 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast we're discussing LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence. Our guests are Sait Bayrakdar from Kings College London and Andrew King from the University of Surrey who, as part of DIAL's CILIA project have been using a large cross national survey to look at the experiences of nearly 29,000 people living in Germany the UK and Portugal. LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence in Germany, Portugal and the UK: A quantitative comparative approach is research by Sait Bayrakdar and Andrew King and is published in the journal Current Sociology.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're discussing LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence. Our guests are Sait Bayrakdar from King's College London and Andrew King from the University of Surrey, who, as part of DIAL's CILIA project have been using a large cross-national survey to look at the experiences of nearly 29,000 people living in Germany, the UK and Portugal. I asked Andrew first to talk us through the background to the research.   Andrew King  0:30  This piece of research is part of the larger CILIA LGBTQI project, which has been exploring inequalities across the lives of LGBTQI people in four European countries - England, Scotland, Germany, and Portugal. We had a large research team from four different institutions on the project. And they brought expertise from different disciplines, as well as different methodologies. So the main aims of the CILIA project were to study LGBTQI inequalities from an intersectional and lifecourse perspective and bring some comparative dimensions to this. We started with a literature review and survey mapping exercise, which helped us document what had been done so far in the area, then we went on to analyse various sources of data, as well as collecting a large qualitative data set from LGBTQI individuals in the four countries. But this research article reports on the research, which was a part of our quantitative strand.   Christine Garrington  1:43  Okay, that's great. Thanks Andrew. I'm going to come back to you a little bit later in our discussion for your sort of reflections on what was was found. But Sait you were the lead author on this, and what was it specifically that you wanted to try to get to grips with and why in this particular paper?   Sait Bayrakdar  1:58  We were aware from our qualitative research that despite over 10 years of equality legislation, issue of discrimination, harassment, and violence we're still very significant to LGBT people, but we wanted to look at this both quantitatively and cross nationally. In a nutshell, we were mainly interested in understanding the patterns of discrimination, harassment and violence experienced by LGBT individuals in these countries. But this was quite tricky, because most survey studies still do not collect information about sexual orientation or gender identity. And it is even more difficult to find an international study that collects data from individuals across different countries. One exception to this was the LGBT survey conducted by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency. And this data allowed us to do a comparative analysis across the countries in the CILIA project. In fact, this really was the on the Pan-European data set that spoke to these inequalities. Also, we wanted to document the diverse experiences and patterns within LGB and T communities. Partly because of data limitations, and small numbers in surveys, these different groups are often merged in a single category as LGBT. Although their experiences differ quite a lot. And our results also come from these differences. Qualitative researchers are quite ahead in this regard. And they have done amazing studies showing the diversity in experiences and outcomes. We hope this research will help us show these differences quantitatively and highlight the need for better survey data collection that allows researchers to study LGBTQI plus lives in this way.   Andrew King  3:37  So although we, there were four countries involved, actually, the dataset just puts everybody into a UK group. So we couldn't separate out England and Scotland. And the other thing is that the dataset doesn't include specific questions relevant for intersex people either. So we weren't able to include intersex people in the quantitative analysis that we did.   Christine Garrington  4:01  Okay, yeah, understood. Now, what sorts of things were people asked about in the Fundamental Rights Agency survey then Sait? It just sounds, it sounds a really useful resource for this.   Sait Bayrakdar  4:12  Yes, absolutely. So the respondents were asked about many things, including their demographic data and social identities, their experiences of discrimination or other kinds of unfair treatment, whether they report these incidents, whether they change their behaviour in public to avoid discrimination. They are also asked about their views about equality policies and their relationships with people they interact in their daily lives. It's quite a rich study, and I believe it is terribly under used by researchers. In this research, we looked at LGBT individuals experiences of discrimination, harassment and violence, and the survey was asking whether they had experienced any of these as a result of the person's sexual orientation and gender identity. We looked at how these differences differ for LGBT individuals separately, and how their social background affects their likelihood of experiencing this incidence.   Christine Garrington  5:07  Yeah and large numbers of people took part in this survey as well. So, Sait let's dig a bit deeper now and move on to you know what everybody is interested to hear about, which is what you actually found - can you talk us through that?   Sait Bayrakdar  5:20  Sure. So earlier, I said that we were interested in bringing forward the diverse experiences within and between LGBT individuals, and between different countries. And I can confidently say that we found out that there are quite striking differences across LGB, and T individuals. First of all, in all countries, trans individuals are more at risk of experiencing negative incidents of discrimination, harassment and violence. Compared to their cisgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual counterparts. This is perhaps not surprising for many, but this wasn't explored quantitatively previously in an academic study. And another interesting finding for me was that different groups were more prone to experience different kinds of negative incidents. For example, lesbians seem more at risk of discrimination and harassment, and gay men are more at risk of violence. We do not know why this is the case. But there is definitely an observable gender pattern here. And my feeling is that this might be related to the ways these identities may be seen as a threat to masculinity. And I think we should definitely need more research to look at these intersections of sexuality, gender, and maybe also other, other social identities.   Christine Garrington  6:38  Yeah, some really, really interesting and important findings emerging here. And was the story the same across all of the three countries that you, you looked at?   Sait Bayrakdar  6:47  Not quite. In the first instance, all three countries showed similar patterns in the likelihood of experiencing these incidents across different groups. In all countries, reports of discrimination and harassment were more common than reports of violence and trans individuals were more likely to experience all three forms of negative incidents but there were some interesting differences when we dug deeper. For example, the rates of violence are higher in the UK, which begs the question why the UK is less able to protect these individuals despite being a front runner in equality legislation? Perhaps another thing is that the reports of violence are particularly high for trans individuals and gay men in the UK. These two groups in the UK are more likely to experience violence than those in Germany and Portugal. And I think this suggests that contextual factors may be shaping some part of these experiences or the likelihood of experiencing these incidents. This is something that comparative data can help us understand a bit better.   Christine Garrington  7:47  Okay, Sait so was there anything else at play? Any other factors that we should take into account or that you took into account that were important or relevant?   Sait Bayrakdar  7:55  Yeah, so we included quite a few other variables relating to social identities and individual characteristics. I think the most important but perhaps not so unexpected finding was that those who have greater socioeconomic resources are less likely to experience these negative incidents. And this implies that class based social inequalities may have a role here as well. So for example, a more economically advantaged person may be able to protect themselves a bit better, whereas other less advantaged might unfortunately, be more vulnerable to such incidents. We found this effect to varying degrees in all countries. I think this is very important because it points out that intersections of class, sexuality and gender identity are creating unique experiences. Depending on one is positioned across different social demographics, the likelihood of experiencing negative incidents change. We also find that LGBT individuals with disabilities and minority ethnic or religious backgrounds are more likely to experience discrimination. It is really very important that we create more empirical evidence on these intersections looking at different life outcomes, not only discrimination, harassment and violence, but maybe also the outcomes of education, labour markets, and other domains of life.   Christine Garrington  9:15  Yeah, no, absolutely understood. Now, what would you say then say, Sait that we take away from all of this in an era where, you know, many people assume or think, believe that discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and identity as somehow a thing of the past? I mean, your your research tells us otherwise?   Sait Bayrakdar  9:32  And this is a very interesting question, which I also find difficult to answer. I think there has been an immense advancement in the equality legislation in the UK, as well as the other countries in our research. And public attitudes have also progressed significantly in recent years. And I think maybe, possibly because of these recent changes, some people may think that the struggle has now been won, and equality has been achieved. However, having legislation is one thing and putting it in effect is another. LGBT individuals still experience discrimination in their day-to-day lives, and the things heterosexual cisgender individuals take for granted are usually not available or accessible to the same extent to LGBT people. And I think that is because the norms and cultures in workplaces, social lives, families are shaped by cis-heteronormativity. So I think those with lived experiences have a better understanding of discrimination and whether or not it is a thing of past.   Christine Garrington  10:33  And on that note, do you have any thoughts on the implications of all of this for, for policy, especially around efforts to promote greater equality, and diversity, you know, wherever we're at in the world, but particularly in these countries.   Sait Bayrakdar  10:47  In this piece we provide quantitative evidence for many issues scholars have been discussing for a while. And we do this by providing further original comparative evidence, we knew that the discrimination, harassment and violence was there. But for me, the most important take home lesson is that there are country differences in the likelihood of experiencing these incidents. And we see that violence is more likely in the UK, particularly for trans individuals. We do not test the effect of potential factors, but our study does show that trans individuals are more more vulnerable to these attacks. So I think policy should really prioritise this. Trans rights have become a very heated topic for some years now. I must say, I think the way trans rights are discussed in the UK is not helping. As a policy priority the government and other policymakers should prioritise addressing trans people's very immediate needs and ensure that everyone regardless of their gender identity is protected from discrimination, harassment and violence. And another issue. Police documents don't always take account of diversity in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, or variations in sex characteristics and intersex status. They often assume that LGBTQI plus communities are a homogeneous group, despite their characteristics and needs being quite different. I think there should be more engagement from policymakers with communities themselves, so they can see that they are working with diversity and difference. This should also take account of differences related to other social backgrounds, such as education, class, ethnicity, disability, religion, and possibly any other significant difference that people may feel or identify with.   Christine Garrington  12:30  Yeah, thank you Sait for those really interesting reflections. And Andrew, I wonder if there's anything that you'd like to add to that?   Andrew King  12:36  Yeah, an overall recommendation from the CILIA project is the need for intersectional policymaking. So policies tend to address people as single subjects and adopt a one size fits all approach, which in a way, erases differences. And as we've demonstrated in our article from an intersectional lifecourse perspective, this is really problematic. This means that we need policymaking that focuses on multiple and contextual marginalities as well as inclusions and exclusions and how privilege and oppression are created in multiple ways. So not recognising this intersectional diversity in policymaking, or perhaps only doing so in limited ways means people who embody the intersections of different and multiple marginalities get overlooked. So while some policies need to be specific, they should also recognise intersections. And we very much hope that our article and the wider CILIA project contributes to a new policy agenda in this respect.   Christine Garrington  13:46  “LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence in Germany, Portugal and the UK. A quantitative comparative approach” is research by Sait Bayrakdar and Andrew King, and is published in the journal Current Sociology. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org. And don't forget to subscribe to the DIAL podcast to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. Thanks for listening to this episode of the DIAL podcast which was presented and produced by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts.