Professor of Work and Education Economics, UCL Institute of Education.
My work focuses on education, skills and job quality, the graduate labour market, political economy and savings.
This website shows the books and papers I have written in these areas, providing links where available. On this home page you will see most of my latest papers and reports.
My current active research projects are:
a) Job Quality in the 21st Century.
Green, F. (2025). Job Quality, Wellbeing and the Global Economy Oxford, Oxford University Press.
This book is now available free online on open access, with hard copy soon obtainable from OUP and booksellers in the United States, then a little later elsewhere.
b) The Skills and Employment Survey 2024
Eight reports present some key descriptive findings about work in the UK today: 1. How Common is Workplace Abuse? 2. What is Happening to Participation at Work? 3. Has the Tide Turned for Trade Unions? 4. What Makes Work Meaningful? 5. What Drives AI and Robot Adoption? 6. Is the Job Quality Gender Gap Narrowing? 7. Are Skill Requirements on the Rise? 8. Is the Office Dying?
Downloadable from: https://wiserd.ac.uk/project/ses/ses2024/. Journal papers in preparation.
c) The Competitive Effects of Free Schools in England on Student Outcomes in Neighbouring Schools
See our comprehensive report: Higham, R., J. Anders, G. Chouhy, F. Green, G. Henseke and R. McGinity (2024). The Free Schools Experiment: Analysing the impacts of English free schools on neighbouring schools. London, IoE, UCL’s Faculty of Education. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10195862/
d) The role of the establishment in determining job quality.
(See Discussion Paper below).
e) Bursaries and scholarships at Britain’s private schools.
(See working paper below).
——————————————————–
Latest papers (those since January 2024)
This latest working paper reports evidence that the establishment where you work is more important for determining your job quality in each of several dimensions, than your type of occupation:
Bryson, Alex, John Forth and Francis Green. 2025. “The Relative Importance of the Establishment in the Determination of Job Quality,” IZA Institute of Labour Economics DP 17724. https://docs.iza.org/dp17724.pdf
Using linked employer-employee data from the British Workplace Employment Relations
Survey we examine how much of the variation in job quality is accounted for by establishment-level variation, and the relative importance of the establishment compared
with occupation and employee characteristics. We do so for pay, six dimensions of non-pay job quality and overall job quality. We show that the establishment is the dominant explanatory factor for non-pay job quality, and as important as occupation in accounting for pay. Where you work accounts for between 38% and 76% of the explained variance in job quality, depending on the dimension. We also find that establishments which are ‘good’ on one dimension of non-pay job quality are ‘good’ on others. When we relate the estimated establishment effects (after allowing for the effects of occupation and of employee characteristics) to observed establishment characteristics, we find that non-pay job quality is greater in smaller establishments.
——————————————————————————————
In this recent working paper, we ask to what extent bursaries and scholarships mitigate the social exclusiveness of Britain’s private schools.
We analyse trends in these grants since 1997. We find that one in ten private school pupils received a bursary or scholarship, while only 3.4 percent of total fees were mitigated in this way. Over time the grants became more common but decreased in value relative to fees. Across income groups, grants were partly progressive, but became less so over time. Across occupational classes, grant frequency was consistently neutral, but grant amounts were somewhat progressive. Drawing on these findings and on historical evidence from the 20th century, the paper concludes that bursaries and scholarships are unlikely to bring forth a significant reform of the socioeconomic sectoral divide in Britain’s school system.
Green, Francis and Henseke, Golo and Lee, Sangwoo and Yong, Anna, “Diluting Exclusivity? The Prevalence and Distribution of Bursaries and Scholarships for Britain’s Private Schools” (October 15, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5609351 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5609351
——————————————————————————————
This next, recent paper, now published in a journal, is a fundamental critique of how the education-economy nexus is conventionally conceived and taught in mainstream economics:
Auerbach, P. and Green, F. (2024), “Reformulating the Critique of Human Capital Theory.” Journal of Economic Surveys. 39(5) 1839-1851 https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12675.
Despite criticism, human capital theory (HCT) has remained central for six decades to the teaching and practice of economics. This paper reformulates the critique of HCT, focusing on two aspects that are typically relegated to the margin.
The first aspect is the pervasive presence of the external effects of learning, which is paid lip service in formal expositions of HCT but marginalized in the bulk of empirical work and policy advice. Similarly marginalized are the social determinants of education demand. We show that the embedding of HCT in methodological individualism makes impossible the incorporation of key, non-peripheral factors that affect the demand for, and effects of education. The resultant tensions from the use of an individualistic methodology to explain inherently social phenomena have been accommodated within HCT by ignoring them. The outcome is problematic in important fields of socioeconomic inquiry, several examples of which are noted in this paper. We conclude by advocating a new research agenda and revised program for the training of economists concerned with learning that includes behavioral economics, applications to education of the capability approach, and an expansion of empirical research on the external effects of education in historical and contemporaneous contexts.
—————————————————————————————-
Lee, Sangwoo, and Francis Green. 2025. “Job Quality in the Republic of Korea: Progress or Decline?” International Labour Review 164 (3): 1–21.
To investigate whether, along with economic growth, the Republic of Korea has become a better place for workers, we examine trends in seven job quality dimensions between 2006 and 2020 and find that the relevant mean values changed in opposite directions. The largest rise was in Working Time Quality, associated with ongoing reductions in working hours against a background of working time regulation. The indices for Earnings and Social Environment also improved, but those for Prospects, Skills and Discretion, Work Intensity and Physical Environment all worsened. We also examine two key axes of inequality and find a gradually diminishing job quality premium in six dimensions for graduates as opposed to non-graduates, and better job quality for men as opposed to women in three dimensions. Given the mounting evidence that job quality affects health and well-being, these findings call into question the presumption that social progress goes hand in hand with sustained economic growth.
—————————————————————————————-
Jake Anders, Francis Green, Morag Henderson, Golo Henseke. (online 2024) ‘Private School Pupils’ Performance in GCSEs (and IGCSEs)’ Cambridge Journal of Education.
Using rich longitudinal data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), the authors compare the performance of private and state school pupils in age 16 national examinations (GCSEs) in England, where private schools are particularly well resourced by international standards. Performance among pupils attending private secondary schools is superior. However, this raw difference ignores the highly socially selective nature of the English private school system. Adjusting for socioeconomic background, the overall performance difference between the sectors disappears. The picture is also quite different when considering English, Maths, Science and Arts subjects separately. Implications are reviewed for debate surrounding the role of private schools and the emphasis of lower secondary state education on core subjects at the expense of Arts subjects.
——————————————————————————————
In this paper, led by Yi Shi who graduated with her PhD from UCL in 2024, we apply Sen’s capability approach to pupils in China’s vocational high schools.
Shi, Y. and Green, F. (2025). “Students’ valued capabilities and their sociodemographic determinants at China’s vocational high schools: a mixed-methods study”. Journal of Vocational Education & Training.
Guided by the capability approach, this study uses primarily quantitative methods to investigate at scale the capabilities that are valued by students of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in China. It identifies the capabilities valued by 892 vocational students in a mix of rural and urban settings. Fourteen capabilities were identified under three thematic domains: capital, health and agency. Compared with other countries, Chinese TVET students do not place as high a value on agency as is found in other countries. Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to value mental health outcomes and, in general, students’ capability choices were greatly influenced by gender, socioeconomic background and personal experiences. Young males, more than young females, value the capability for economic wellbeing. However, unlike in other countries, males and those from higher socio-economic backgrounds are no more likely than others to attach importance to agentic values. These findings can be interpreted within China’s socioeconomic context and Confucianism-rooted value system. The study contributes to the methodology literature on youth empowerment and ascertaining their voice, further demonstrates the potential of the capability approach in educational contexts and provides a first step towards analysing the broad role of TVET in China.
——————————————————————————————
Green, F. Lee, S., Zhou, Y. and Zou, M. (2024). “Work and life: the relative importance of job quality for general well-being, and implications for social surveys”. Socio-Economic Review. 22(2): 835-857.
In this paper, we show why the growing science of job quality is achieving such prominence across the social sciences. We investigate the relative importance of variations in job quality in accounting for variations in general well-being among employed people in Europe, the United States, Australia and South Korea.
We find that the importance of job quality is everywhere of a similar magnitude to that of health, while both are far more important than other conventional determinants, including education, gender, marital status, parental status, age, or household income. Job quality accounts for somewhat more of well-being’s variation among men than among women. Within the majority of European countries, the R-squared for the variation accounted for ranges between 14 and 19 percent. The paper’s findings, alongside rising policy interest, support the allocation of a greater priority for job quality in general socio-economic and labour force surveys.
——————————————————————————————-
Green, F. “Private schools and inequality” (2024) Oxford Open Economics, 3 (Supplement_1) i842-i849. doi:10.1093/ooec/odad036
Among the significant inequalities within Britain’s school system, the greatest lies in the resources gap and the social segmentation between fee-paying and state schools. Published estimated average effects of attending private schools in Britain on academic performance are modest, but nevertheless significant at each stage of education. Cumulatively, by the end of a school career the private school pupil has gained notably higher qualifications compared with a state school pupil with an observably similar background – enough to ensure a distinct advantage in access to a high-status university, a good job and high pay. These gains add to the educational advantages of growing up with an affluent family background. An unusually high proportion of private school alumni occupy highly influential positions in business, in the judicial system, in the press and in politics. A further financial advantage from private school stems from an increased probability of partnering with a richer spouse. The hallmark of a good school policy for reducing inequality would be one which opens up access to private schools, so that participation is no longer constrained as much by financial background, and which diminishes substantially the inequalities between schools’ resources. Feasible reforms are of two kinds: those which would lower parental demand for private schooling, inducing enlargement of the state sector, and those which would directly integrate pupils from the state sector into currently private schools. Currently bursaries are far too small to make a substantial difference.
————————————————————————————
Green, F. and S. Lee (2024). “‘Bad Jobs’ in Europe: Derivation and Analysis of a Wellbeing-Related Job Quality Threshold.” Applied Research in Quality of Life.
A method is proposed for defining the threshold of a ‘bad job’, based on a discontinuity in the relationship between a composite index of job quality and subjective wellbeing. Applied to European data, there is a monotonic relationship between the job quality index and psychological wellbeing. However, there is a distinctly large increase in psychological wellbeing, and in several measures of work-related wellbeing, between workers in the lowest decile and those in the second lowest decile of job quality. We therefore propose that ‘bad jobs’ should be designated as those in lowest decile. Using this threshold gives a ‘bad jobs’/ ‘other jobs’ dichotomy that discriminates on wellbeing far better than definitions based only on low earnings and job insecurity. Using multi-level probit analysis, we find that bad jobs are more common in poorer countries and in countries with weaker labour regulation. Three findings differentiate the distributional pattern of bad jobs from that of low-earnings jobs: first, the prevalence of bad jobs is greater in large establishments; second, there is no gender gap in the prevalence of bad jobs; third, working in the private sector raises the chance of being in a bad job but not of being in a low earnings job.
——————————————————————————————-
Henseke, G., A. Felstead, D. Gallie and F. Green (2024). “Degrees of Demand: A Task-Based Analysis of the British Graduate Labour Market.” Oxford Economic Papers (online May 2024).
This study investigates the evolving demand for graduate skills in the British workforce, leveraging a task-based approach with data from the Skills and Employment Survey Series. Focused on the changing importance of job tasks related to graduate skills, the research explores the mapping of these tasks to educational attainment, discerns the price employers pay for tasks requiring graduate skills, and addresses regional variation in graduate supply and demand. Despite a slowing growth of graduate skills requirements post-2006, we find a stable assignment of graduate education with job tasks and an overall flat task price related to graduate skills requirements. We present regional evidence showing education expansion rather than exogenous factors drove high-skills demand, balancing the development of supply and demand in the British graduate labour market over 1997–2017.
Professor Francis Green 