Economic disadvantage, policy design and individual decision making

Disadvantage in terms of financial resources is often coupled with disadvantage in other dimensions, such as human capital, working conditions or labour market opportunities. This doctoral thesis serves as an examination of three economic questions, where individuals' disadvantage affects their economic decision making, or where disadvantaged individuals are the target of policies designed to improve their economic outcomes. In Chapter 1, we demonstrate how a policy targeted at poor individuals might fail in its objectives because the design of the policy causes some of the intended beneficiaries to suffer what we term an identity cost. In Chapter 2, we identify that women still fall behind men, in terms of labour market outcomes, partly due to their choices after childbearing. We show that women in the UK significantly reduce hours worked after having a second child, that this effect persistently occurs and is almost twice as prevalent among women working in low-skilled occupations, as opposed to women working in high or intermediate-skilled occupations. In Chapter 3, we study the impact of a school conversion programme in England, targeted at underperforming schools, typically attended by children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, with below-average prior performance. We show that giving schools more autonomy improves short and medium-term outcomes for the students attending them, and the effect is particularly strong for the most deprived students.