The impact of school exclusion in childhood on health and well-being outcomes in adulthood: Estimating causal effects using inverse probability of treatment weighting

BACKGROUND

Previous evidence has suggested a strong association between school exclusion and health outcomes. However, as health risks are themselves related to the risk of experiencing a school exclusion, it has been challenging to determine the extent to which school exclusion impacts later health outcomes, as opposed to reflecting a marker for pre-existing risks.

AIM

The aim of the current study was to address this challenge in estimating the medium-to-long-term impact of school exclusion of health and well-being outcomes.

METHODS

To this end, we used an inverse propensity weighting approach in the Next Steps data set (N = 6534, from wave 1, 2014, to wave 8, 2015).

RESULTS

We found that after weighting for propensity of treatment scores estimated based on a wide range of factors, including previous health indicators, there was a significant effect of school exclusion on a wide range of health and well-being outcomes.

DISCUSSION

These results provide some of the most robust evidence to date that school exclusion harms long-term health outcomes.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggest that policies should aim to reduce exclusion and ensure access to preventative health support for those who experience a school exclusion.

Studying informal care during the pandemic: mental health, gender and job status

Unexpected negative health shocks such as COVID-19 put pressure on households to provide more care to relatives and friends. This study uses data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to investigate the impact of informal caregiving on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that individuals who started providing care after the pandemic began reported more mental health issues than those who never provided care. Additionally, the gender gap in mental health widened during the pandemic, with women more likely to report mental health issues. We also find that those who began providing care during the pandemic reduced their work hours compared to those who never provided care. Our results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the mental health of informal caregivers, particularly for women.

Informal care, older people, and COVID-19: Evidence from the UK

The negative health effects and mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately fell upon older and disabled people. Protecting these vulnerable groups has been a key policy priority throughout the pandemic and related vaccination campaigns. Using data from the latest survey of the UK Household Longitudinal Study on COVID-19 we found that people who receive informal care have higher probability of being infected when compared to those not receiving informal care. Further, we found that care recipients who are in the lowest income groups have a higher probability of catching the virus when compared to those in the highest income groups. We also estimated the likelihood of being infected for informal carers versus those who did not provide any care during the pandemic and found no significant differences between these two groups. Our empirical findings suggest that the standard measures introduced with the aim of protecting vulnerable groups, such as closing care homes or prioritising the vaccination of their staff, were not sufficient to avoid the spread of the virus amongst disabled and older people. Informal carers play an important role in the social care sector. As such, protecting vulnerable people by investing in the informal care sector should be a priority for future health policy.

Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty

This study explores how researchers' analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers' expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team's workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers' results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.

Diverging mental health after Brexit: Evidence from a longitudinal survey

This study analyses the changes in mental health in the UK that occurred as a result of the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the EU (Brexit). Using the Household Longitudinal Study, we compare the levels of self-reported mental distress, mental functioning and life satisfaction be-fore and after the referendum. A linear fixed effects analysis revealed an overall decrease in mental health post-referendum with higher levels of mental distress, and a decline in the SF-12 Mental Component Summary score. Furthermore, the study does not find evidence of significant changes in overall life satisfaction in the two years after the referendum. Younger men, highly educated and Natives, especially those living in stronger "Remain areas", seem to be the groups most affected by the Brexit in terms of mental health. Overall, the results of this study suggest that the outcome of the referendum and the economic uncertainty that it brought impacted the mental health of voters in a negative and diverging way.

Long-term labour market and economic consequences of school exclusions in England: Evidence from two counterfactual approaches

Background

Previous research suggests that school exclusion during childhood is a precursor to social exclusion in adulthood. Past literature on the consequences of school exclusion is, however, scarce and mainly focused on short‐term outcomes such as educational attainment, delinquency, and mental health in early adolescence. Moreover, this evidence is based primarily on descriptive and correlational analysis, whereas robust causal evidence is required to best inform policy.

Aims

We aimed to estimate the mid‐to‐long‐term impact of school exclusion on labour market and economic outcomes.

Sample

The sample included 6,632 young people who at the age of 25/26 in the year 2015 participated in the Next Steps survey of whom 86 were expelled from school and 711 were suspended between the ages of 13/14 and 16/17.

Method

Using high quality existing longitudinal data, we utilized four approaches to evaluate the impact of school exclusion: logistic regression‐adjustment models, propensity score matching, school fixed‐effects analysis, and inverse propensity weighting. The latter two counterfactual approaches were used to estimate causal effects.

Results

We found that school exclusion increased the risk of becoming NEET at the age of 19/20, and then remaining economically inactive at the age of 25/26, as well as experiencing higher unemployment risk and earning lower wages also at the age of 25/26.

Conclusion

School exclusion has pervasive negative effects into adulthood. Policy interventions should focus on both prevention and mitigating its negative effects. Interventions aimed at re‐integrating excluded individuals into education or vocational training could be key in reducing the risk of poor socio‐economic outcomes and social exclusion.