Family Economics

Autumn 2023

The current module does not have a final exam. Instead, for the second half of the module, students are provided with a set of four available tasks related to the material taught on the module along with own further explorations. Each task is designed to develop different authentic skills as outlined below and allows the student freedom to develop their submissions along their own interests.
Each task involves preparing an item for submission (see below for further details). Feedback on progress will be provided at group-level a few weeks before the final submission.
Students should CHOOSE THREE out of the four available tasks to complete and submit the requested outputs combined as a single portfolio. A FINAL DEADLINE applies to portfolio at the end of term ). All three submitted items will be graded, but only the BEST TWO will count towards the final mark. The overall portfolio is worth 50 percent of the module mark (25 percent per portfolio item for the best two).
The Tasks
The below sets out the four available tasks and what is expected to be submitted in relation to each.

1. Policy Brief: Fertility-Stimulating Policy
   This task will help students develop skills in collating research and presenting policy advice by drawing on the teaching on the module and searching for additional supplementary sources.
   Setting: The government of Freedonia is concerned about the low fertility rate in their country. You have been invited, as academic advisor, to provide short presentation to the relevant government minister on the empirical evidence on the effect of public policy on fertility along with suggested policy advice for increasing the country’s fertility rate.
   Task: Drawing on the material taught, along with any other reading of your own choice, prepare and submit a PowerPoint presentation (max 2 slides with content) that could be presented to the policy- maker on the effect of public policy on fertility along with recommendations for possible policies to raise fertility. A final slide should list references used.
2. Data Visualization: Marriage-Migration to the UK
   This task allows the student to practice basic data visualisation for presenting quantitative data on a topic related to families and policy.
   Setting: Marriage-related migration to the UK is an important contributor to overall UK immigration as well as to marriage patterns in the UK. Marriage-related migration typically involves a spouse from the “homeland”, but it is an understudied phenomenon. This task reading one article from 2012 on marriage-migration to the UK and then to update some of the stylized facts presented in that article with data up to 2020.

Task: Look through the paper “Marriage-Related Migration to the UK” by Charsley et al. (2012) International Migration Review 46, 861-890 as background. Then use the two datasets provided (AggregateData.xls and CountryData.xls) to present updated stylized facts about marriage-related migration to the UK up to year 2020. Specifically, use the provided data to generate updated version of Figures I – VI in Charsley et al. with accompanying comments on what the data shows. (Max 400 words in total). The task is to be completed in R Studio and using R Markdown to generate an html output. The html output – which should show the R commands, the outputs and the comments – can then be printed to pdf and submitted as item in the portfolio.
Material: For this task a zip file has been provided that contains the background article (Charsley et al, 2012), the two data sets in excel format, along with a sample R Markdown file to get you started.

3. Research Methods from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Adoption and Twin Studies
   This task will allow students to explore research from an interdisciplinary perspective by searching for and exploring some piece of research in some other discipline that uses research designs popular also in Economics.
   Setting: Using a search tool such as Google Scholar, find and read a research article from a discipline other than economics that uses either an adoption-based or twins-based research design. Potential topics in other disciplines include: aggressive behaviour, heritability of disease, child development, educational attainment and many others.
   Task: Prepare a one-page report on the selected article that (i) summarizes the selected article, covering the research question, how the adoption/twin-design is central to the identification strategy, and its main findings, and (ii) provides a personal reflection on how the design used in the selected study compares to identification strategies encountered on the current module. (Max 400 words, excluding references)
4. Research Design: Domestic Violence in London
   This task encourages the student to think creatively about research questions and research designs.
   Setting: You have been given access to data from the London Metropolitan Police on all domestic violence incidents recorded by the police in the Greater London area between 2015 and 2021. The data is detailed, providing information on the exact location (address), date and time, victim’s relation to the perpetrator, the police response to each incident (arrest versus caution). In addition, the data has been linked to annual tax and benefit records, and hospital records for all adults in the households.
   Task: Provide a one-page page research proposal suggesting two research questions that the above data could be used to answer. For each suggested research question, outline the hypothesis you would seek to test, how the data would be able to address specific question, and give one reference from the literature (using for instance Google Scholar, but without summarising the chosen article) relevant to the chosen research question. Note: a suggested research question does not have to make use of all dimensions of the data available but has to use some of the data. (Max 400 words, excluding references)