News & Media Highlights
Die postvirale Klassengesellschaft (in German)
Anfangs hat die Pandemie die Schere zwischen Arm und Reich sogar etwas geschlossen. Das bleibt aber nicht so, im Gegenteil.
Lockdowns widen the gender gap in mental health
Women, the young, and the less educated have borne the brunt of the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns in terms of job and earnings losses. As this column reports, women have also suffered far more from social distancing measures than men in terms of their mental health.
American inequality meets COVID19
A survey of 4,000 American workers conducted by a team of European economists found that 16.4% had already lost their job because of the viral shock. Workers who are younger, poorer or lack a university education have disproportionately lost their source of income.
College Graduates Are Less Likely To Become Unemployed Due To The Coronavirus
New research shows college graduates are less likely to lose their job during the coronavirus outbreak than those without a degree. That’s the finding documented in a working paper that is part of the COVID Inequality Project, a project interested in understanding how the pandemic and government policies are impacting inequality.
On trying, failing and persisting
There is now ample evidence that socio-emotional skills are as important as basic cognition in driving individual success. Among these skills, grit clearly stands out. Grit is generally defined as perseverance in a productive task in the face of — often repeated and frustrating — setbacks. Our paper provides evidence that grit is malleable in childhood.
Research Spotlight: Parental Beliefs About Returns to Different Types of Investments
“To understand why some parents invest more into their children and to gain a better understanding of how parents might respond to policy changes, it is important to understand how parents perceive returns to investments,” the authors write. This paper finds that perceived returns to all three investments are positive and, crucially, it establishes that “parents who perceive the returns to investments to be higher also invest considerably more into their children.”
Building Grit in the Classroom and Measuring Changes in it
About a year ago I reviewed Angela Duckworth’s book on grit. At the time I noted that there were compelling ideas, but that two big issues were that her self-assessed 10-item Grit scale could be very gameable, and that there was really limited rigorous evidence as to whether efforts to improve grit have lasting impacts. A cool new paper by Sule Alan, Teodora Boneva, and Seda Ertac makes excellent progress on both fronts.