The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for policy in relation to children and young people: a research review
Smyth and fellow collaborators at ESRI, Dublin.
Research questions:
How has COVID-19 impacted on the lives of children and young people in terms of their family and peer relationships; formal and informal learning; physical and mental health and wellbeing; and transitions to further/higher education, training and the youth labour market?
Type(s) of inequality and how inequality is defined:
Inequality is defined as the differences in social class, education and/or household income across groups of children, young people and families.
Approach or method used:
Employment is a crucial sphere of life which provides access to financial and social resources important for the quality of life and well-being of individuals and their families. However, access to employment, and to high-quality jobs, is often unequally distributed across different groups and geographical areas.
Our research will seek to explore employment inequalities across a number of factors, including family employment patterns and child care take-up and the impact on child outcomes, as well as the impact of the family environment on labour market and educational outcomes. We will also look at the impact of neighbourhood context on labour market outcomes; specifically we will focus on employment trajectories across ethnic groups, and whether or not these are affected differently by neighbourhood context.
Our current research projects on employment inequalities are listed below. These link closely with our research on Socio-Economic, Ethnicity, Spatial, Well-being, Gender and Age inequalities