Professor of Work and Education Economics, UCL Institute of Education.

My work focuses on schools, skills and job quality, the graduate labour market, political economy and savings.

This website shows what I have written in these areas and provides links where available. This home page highlights and gives links to my latest papers, presentations and blogs.

I will be pleased to consider applications for PhD supervision on private schooling or on job quality which involve quantitative or mixed methods.

On this page you will see most of my latest published papers; then, further down, links to podcasts and webinars I have taken part in, and finally links to my recent working papers.

My current active research projects are:

·        Job Quality in the 21st Century.

·        Job Quality for State and Private School Teachers Before and After the Pandemic Lockdowns.

·        The Competitive Effects of Free Schools in England on Student Outcomes in Neighbouring Schools

•    The 2023 Skills and Employment Survey

Latest papers

Berg, J., F. Green, L. Nurski and D. Spencer (2023). “Risks to job quality from digital technologies: Are industrial relations in Europe ready for the challenge?” European Journal of Industrial Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801231178904

We examine job quality effects of new digital technologies, using the European frame of seven job quality domains: Pay, Working Time Quality, Prospects, Skills and Discretion, Work Intensity, Social Environment, and Physical Environment. Theoretical effects are ambivalent across all domains. The analysis of these effects confirms that digital  technologies can both improve and harm job quality depending on how they are used. In light of this analysis and to think through the challenge of regulating digital technologies, we review emerging regulations across several European countries. Drawing on the principles of human-centred design, we argue that worker participation is important for securing good job quality outcomes, at both the innovation and adoption stages. We also consider the application of data protection legislation to the regulation of job quality. Overall, the paper extends debate about the future of work beyond employment and pay, on to a consideration of job quality more broadly. 

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Wiggins, R. D., Parsons, S., Green, F., Ploubidis, G. B., & Sullivan, A. (2023). Are Right-Wing Attitudes and Voting Associated with Having Attended Private School? An Investigation Using the 1970 British Cohort Study. Sociology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385221141386

This article addresses the question of whether attending a private school affects voting behaviour and political attitudes in adulthood in Britain. The analysis is based upon the British Cohort Study, a nationally representative cohort of children born in one week in April 1970. The ‘effect’ of attending a private school on the tendency to vote Conservative in four consecutive General Elections, and on the expression of conservative attitudes in mid-life is assessed using path analysis. The model includes multiple indicators for a range of antecedents: social origins at birth, cultural and material capital, academic achievements and early social class destination. Once these antecedents are included in the model, for both men and women a direct positive relationship remains between attending private school and voting Conservative and holding right-leaning attitudes. The main significance of these findings follows from the high proportion of private school alumni in influential positions in public life.

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Green, F. and Taylor-Gooby, P. (2022) Asset or Liability? Assessing Evidence on the Aggregate Effects of Private Schools on British Society. London: UCL Institute of Education, LLAKES Centre, Research Paper 71.

This paper assembles and assesses evidence surrounding the macro-social effects on education and the productive system of the segmented divide between Britain’s private and state schools. It aims thereby to shed scientific light on a prominent public discourse. In Britain’s schools there is a huge inter-sectoral resource gap, a large inter-sectoral disparity in pupils’ wealth, substantial pupil segmentation, and a small but significant minority enrolment of non-British pupils. For education, we consider evidence on academic and non-academic outcomes, boarding, peer effects, segmentation and school management efficiency. For the productive system we consider evidence on economic growth, the allocation of talent, well-being, political attitudes and charitable behaviour. Available evidence supports the conclusion that an unequal divide results in less efficient schooling than would be the case in a comprehensive system. However, the discussion emphasizes that the evidence in several areas is sparse and calls for more transparency and relevant research.

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Henderson, M., J. Anders, F. Green and G. Henseke (2022). “Does attending an English private school benefit mental health and life satisfaction? From adolescence to adulthood.” Cambridge Journal of Education. 52 (5): 539-553.

Previous research has shown that there is a small but significant cumulative private school advantage in terms of educational attainment in Britain. However, research on how school type influences non-educational outcomes is more scarce. This paper aims to identify the extent to which school type influences satisfaction with life and mental health from adolescence to early adulthood. Using Next Steps, a longitudinal study of young people in England born in 1989/90, the authors use multiple variable regression analyses to address the research questions. They find that for this cohort there is no evidence of a difference for mental health and life satisfaction by school type for either men or women in adolescence or early adulthood.

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Green, F., Henseke, G. and I. Schoon (2022)  Perceived effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on educational progress and the learning of job skills: new evidence on young adults in the United Kingdom. Journal of Education and Work, 35(5): 485-501.

We present new evidence on the pandemic’s effects on youth, for the first time focusing on perceived effects on the learning of job skills, as well as on education. The context is post-Brexit Britain. We find that 47% of young people in a representative sample perceive a loss of learning of job skills, while a sizeable minority (17%) judge that the pandemic improved matters. The perception of skill loss is worse among those encountering Covid directly, and far worse among those in school, college or university than among those in employment. Among those in education, loss of learning of job skills is higher among those experiencing only online learning, but lower for those who have had some work experience. Among those in employment, loss of learning is mitigated by training, which dropped sharply at the start of the pandemic but recovered and thereafter deviated little from its long-term trend. Neither the average amount of training, nor the perception of loss of learning, were affected by being placed on ‘furlough’ leave. Finally, perceptions of loss of learning of job skills were greater for women than for men, and greater in Wales and Scotland than in England and Northern Ireland.

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Francis Green (2021) Decent Work and The Quality of Work and Employment.

Handbook on Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Section: Worker Representation, Labor-Management Relations and Labor Standards. U. Jirjahn. Online, Springer Nature.

This review examines the concept of the quality of work and employment (QWE), including both ‘Decent Work’ and the narrower concept of ‘job quality’. The key axiom is that ‘quality’ relates to the extent and manner in which working conditions meet people’s needs from work. The review emphasises the multi-disciplinary nature of the topic. It discusses the concept’s objective character, its relationship with well-being,  and its link with productivity. Important measurement issues are considered, including cost, international comparability, the choice of how many indices, the treatment of inequality and the problem of discipline insularity. Some theories of the antecedents of QWE imply universal trends, while others predict differentiation across countries and regions, attributable to labour market institutions and policy. The effects on well-being and health are studied in several disciplines, including a substantial research programme in psychology. Summary trends in Europe and distributions of job quality are presented for context, including gender gaps. This description shows gradual improvement in the physical environment of work and in working time quality over the decade from 2005. Yet the distribution of job quality in several domains is not at all closely related to a country’s GDP. The review concludes with a discussion of job quality policy making, and frames the ongoing research agenda.

See here for an online seminar presentation of this and related papers at the Eurasia Business and Economics Society Conference, Istanbul, 2/7/2021.

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Francis Green, Golo Henseke and Ingrid Schoon.

The Darkest Hour? New Evidence of the Learning Experiences, Well-Being and Expectations of Youth During the Third National Lockdown in the UK.

UCL Institute of Education, LLAKES Centre. COVID-19 Youth Economic Activity and Health Monitor. Briefing No. 1. (March 2021).

This briefing presents new evidence surrounding young people’s employment, learning, well-being, and future expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these are connected. It does so through the reports of a representative sample of young people themselves at the beginning of February 2021 in the midst of a strict lockdown throughout the UK. The survey shows that the pandemic has had negative effects on the lives of young people in the sample in ways that affect how they see their future as well as their present state of well-being.

Among other findings, it is seen that young people’s life satisfaction was low, and that their dissatisfaction with life was associated with COVID-19 indirectly, through the perceived effect it had had on loss of learning. While the level of life dissatisfaction was 36% among those who perceived that their skills had worsened, it was only 20% among those whose learning was unaffected. However, there is no notable link between life satisfaction and having experienced direct health effects of the disease at first hand or among family and close friends. In contrast, COVID-19 had both direct consequences for mental distress and indirect consequences for mental distress via learning loss and loss of social connectedness.

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Access to Britain’s highly-resourced private schools matters because of concerns surrounding social mobility. Using the UK Family Resources Survey, we document a high and mostly stable income concentration of private school access since 1997. Nevertheless, some low-income participation persists. We show that bursaries are income-progressive but too small to account for this participation. Housing wealth, however, is found to be greater for private school participants, and it is likely that low-income participants are drawing on family wealth.

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Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

Just over half of work intensification from 2001 to 2017 is explained with variables that measure effort-biased technological change, effort-biased organizational change, the growing requirement for learning new things, and the rise of self-employment. The authors interpret the work intensification within a power-resources framework.

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Photo by Tima Miroshniche

For most students the aspiration to gain employment in a graduate job is the main motivation for going to university. Yet whether they fulfil this aspiration depends considerably on national graduate labour markets. We analyse the comparative evolution of these markets across Europe over the decade leading up to 2015, focusing on supply, graduate/high-skilled jobs, underemployment, wages, the graduate wage premium and the penalty for underemployment. The supply of tertiary graduates increased everywhere and converged, and this upward convergence is forecast to persist. In contrast the growth of graduate jobs was slower, not ubiquitous and nonconvergent. Underemployment was spreading, though at a modest rate; this rise was convergent but not ubiquitous. The rise was most substantial in Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy and Greece. Graduates’ real wages trended predominantly downward, but varied a great deal between countries. The graduate wage premium declined by more than one percentage point in seven countries. Inferences are drawn for the formation of education policy, for the broader discourse on HE, and for research on graduate futures.

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Green, F. and G. Henseke (2021). “Task-Warranted Graduate Jobs and Mismatch.” Singapore Economic Review online.

We distinguish between “task-warranted” and “task-unwarranted” graduate jobs. For both types, a degree is required but task-warranted graduate jobs involve carrying out typical graduate-level tasks. We operationalize the distinction, using representative surveys of resident Singapore workers. We find that the ongoing fast expansion of higher attainment between 2013 and 2017 was met by a similarly-strong growth in task-warranted graduate jobs. Compared with the matched graduates, the graduates in task-unwarranted graduate jobs and in non-graduate jobs both perceive lower skills utilization. There is a negative wage gap of 18% for graduates in task-unwarranted graduate jobs, and of 31% for underemployed graduates.

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The fear of unemployment has increased around the world in the wake of Covid-19. Research has shown that job insecurity affects both mental and physical health, though the effects are lower when employees are easily re-employable.

The detrimental effects of job insecurity could be partly mitigated if employers improved other aspects of job quality that support better health. But as job insecurity is felt by many more people than just the unemployed, the negative health effects during recessions are multiplied and extend through the majority of the population. This reinforces the need for effective, stabilising macroeconomic policies, most especially at this time of pandemic.

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podcasts and talks

PODCASTS

1. 1. Should Private Schools Operate as Registered Charities?. A Do One Better podcast.

1. 1. Privilege, Inequality and Education: Britain’s Private School Problem – Prof. Francis Green | Acaudio

1. 1. Research for the Real World. Employment prospects, job quality and the intensification of work. A UCL Podcast.

TALKS

1. 1. Human Development and Capability Association: Work and Employment Thematic Group. Webinar 11/2/2021. Decent Work and the Quality of Work and Employment.

1. 1. UCL Lunchtime Lecture: “What Do Private Schools Do?” 8/12/2020

https://youtu.be/IfcGUY_NpiY

3. Private School Sector Claims: A Fact Check

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recent working papers

1. 1. Green, F. and Taylor-Gooby, P. (2022) Asset or Liability? Assessing Evidence on the Aggregate Effects of Private Schools on British Society. London: UCL Institute of Education, LLAKES Centre, Research Paper 71. This paper assembles and assesses evidence surrounding the macro-social effects on education and the productive system of the segmented divide between Britain’s private and state schools. It aims thereby to shed scientific light on a prominent public discourse.

1. 1. Green, F. (2020). Schoolwork in lockdown: new evidence on the epidemic of educational poverty. London: UCL Institute of Education, LLAKES Centre, Research Paper 67. This paper shows worrying evidence of children undertaking little schoolwork at home during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. 1. Wielgoszewska, B., Green, F. and Goodman, A. (2020) Finances and employment during lockdown – Initial findings from the COVID-19 Survey in Five National Longitudinal Studies. London: UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies. This report presents evidence of how people in Britain were affected during May 2020, in the later stages of the first wave lockdown.

1. 1. Henseke, G. and F. Green (2020). The rising value of interpersonal job tasks for graduate pay in Europe. Oxford, Centre for Global Higher Education, Working Paper 53. Both in Britain and across Europe, interpersonal skills have become more highly rewarded for graduates.

1. 1. Wiggins, R.D., Parsons, S., Green, F., Ploubidis, G. and Sullivan, A. (2020) Does private schooling make you right-wing? An investigation using the 1970 British Cohort Study. CLS Working Paper 2020/8. London: UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Even after allowing for a constellation of antecedents, this paper presents evidence for a direct relationship between attending private school and the expression of right wing attitudes for both men and women.

1. 1. Henseke, G. and Green, F. (2020) Singapore’s Graduate Labour Market, 2013/2017: A Task-based Analysis, Research Paper 68, Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies at: http:// http://www.llakes.ac.uk. We find that the expansion of higher attainment in the resident workforce is being met by a similarly-strong growth in graduate jobs.