Ben Barr

Mike Brewer, Deputy Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “Britain is getting older and sicker, while a greater share of its population has a disability. While these trends affect the whole of society, they are starkest in the poorest half of working-age families across the country. “But while we talk a lot about the effects of ageing and ill-health, the implications on demand for unpaid care is largely absent from political debate. That’s despite Britain having an ‘unsung army’ of one million people who do at least 35 hours of unpaid care work every week – equivalent to a full-time job. “It is time to provide better support for these carers and their families, just as we have done with working parents in recent decades. Carers deserve greater financial support in Universal Credit, more help to stay in work if they want to, and decent social care system to help the relieve the pressure on families.”

🚨 New

Britain’s ‘unsung’ army – a million people in poorer working-age households now have full-time unpaid caring responsibilities .

The dude whose company, thanks to Labour, will run our military analytics and to whom Wes Streeting is giving our personal healthcare data.

The use of the two-way fixed effects regression in empirical social science was historically motivated by folk wisdom that it uncovers the Average Treatment effect on the Treated (ATT) as in the canonical two-period two-group case. This belief has come under scrutiny recently due to recent results in applied econometrics showing that it fails to uncover meaningful averages of heterogeneous treatment effects in the presence of effect heterogeneity over time and across adoption cohorts, and several heterogeneity-robust alternatives have been proposed. However, these estimators often have higher variance and are therefore under-powered for many applications, which poses a bias-variance tradeoff that is challenging for researchers to navigate. In this paper, we propose simple tests of linear restrictions that can be used to test for differences in dynamic treatment effects over cohorts, which allows us to test for when the two-way fixed effects regression is likely to yield biased estimates of the ATT. These tests are implemented as methods in the pyfixest python library.

arXiv📈🤖
When can we get away with using the two-way fixed effects regression?
By Lal

I really hope people advocating to ban kids from SM read this. Some kids are isolated by disabilities or circumstances. Furthermore, some kids grow up in abusive households. “Ideally, a child’s exposure to online worlds should be moderated by their parents” isn’t a reassuring sentiment for everyone

I don’t know that much about American politics, but whenever I see a clip of Ossoff I think “why is there not more presidential chatter about this guy?”

Waiting lists cut 3 times faster in highest joblessness areas Waiting lists in 20 areas in England fall 3 times faster than the national average thanks to experts deployed by government to help supercharge NHS care.

On 14 January Wes Streeting said that waiting lists had fallen three times faster in 20 areas of the country where crack teams had been deployed. We’ve looked at this claim and have questions. 🧵
www.gov.uk/government/n...

Immigration salience in the Jan 2026 Ipsos issues index

Most affluent areas (least deprived): 47%
2nd most affluent: 38%
3rd (middle) quintile: 44%
2nd most deprived: 38%
Most deprived quintile: 44%

Social mobility and mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis Socioeconomic status (SES) is a robust correlate of mental health, and emerging research indicates that life course trajectories of SES (i.e., social …

Could a significant rise in young people reporting feelings of despair since 2015 suggest a generation increasingly without hope as paths to social and income mobility close.- life long debts to obtain a degree, declining job opportunities, high housing costs?
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🚨 New research 🚨

We wanted to look at the realistic options for SEND reform, asking teachers where they would focus if there was no additional funding.

Given the debate so far on limiting EHCPs and moving focus has been very negative, we were surprised to find over half of teachers back it ⤵️

Scrap Palantir UK contracts over Mandelson links, Zack Polanski demands ZACK Polanski has demanded that the UK Government scraps its contracts with Palantir, amid mounting questions over Peter Mandelson’s role in…

Get Palantir out of the UK.

Protect our NHS.

Protect our country.

www.thenational.scot/news/2582860...

Really like this way of doing system maps with experts by experience, and comparing them to system maps generated by experts & policymakers - a really persuasive way of showing what's missed from research/policy ways of thinking

New @centrehealthpolicy.bsky.social blog by @lisagarnham.bsky.social @profellenstu.bsky.social & @clemmiehilloconnor.bsky.social & me summarises what lived experience insights show us that traditional research evidence misses about housing and health: www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/c...

Remember the same feeling reading Bourdieu back in 1990..

Advancing the Science and Scholarship of Health Equity Health equity research has advanced substantially during the past 2 decades and has emerged as a foundational element of population health science and scholarship.1 JAMA Health Forum has embraced thi...

"When researchers cannot specify and be transparent about what equity means in their work, it risks becoming an aesthetic rather than a commitment."

Sharp piece by Choi et al outling several issues with contemporary research that have increasingly troubled me.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Mandelson’s links with US tech firm Palantir must be fully exposed, campaigners warn Government faces call for transparency on former peer’s involvement amid fears he may have leaked more sensitive information

A rot at heart of government.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

listen to CRR and read our paper on dementia's impact on household finances: www.nber.org/papers/w34659

🧵 New version of our paper (@bcegerod.bsky.social) is finally online: "How Many is Enough? Sample Size in Staggered Difference-in-Differences Designs"
We show that even well-identified DiD studies are often underpowered; sample sizes needed are surprisingly large
Paper: osf.io/preprints/os... 1/6

Figure 17 shows a range of estimates of the impact of Brexit on GDP per person, using similar methods to the aforementioned study to compare the UK to other countries.The estimates vary based on the economic variables (such as educational attainment and openness to trade) used to match the UK to the countries which make up its counterfactual path. The range reflects the challenges in accurately identifying a counterfactual – we cannot observe how the UK would have grown had it remained within the EU – but it suggests the impact on GDP per person may well sit above 4 per cent already.

Failing to pursue closer integration with the EU creates tension with the Government’s growth ambitions.

The Brexit impact on GDP per person may be bigger than feared; the impact on GDP per person may well sit above 4 per cent already.

Read more ➡️ buff.ly/VWHNFCb

That which is for me through the medium of money - that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) - that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money's properties are my - the possessor's - properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness - its deterrent power - is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: is. - Ed.] power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?

As a side note, it’s funny to see so many of these emails with thirsty academics repeatedly enact Marx’s bit in the 1844 Manuscripts about the power of money. “Oh Mr Epstein, your house in New York is enormous and, unrelatedly, your questions at dinner were so intelligent, so insightful, so deep.”

London among the top ten greenest cities in the world, report shows The city came in tenth place overall, earning an admirable Green City Index score of 66.85

London has landed in the top ten greenest cities on the planet 🌱

Not bad for a city that never sits still.

We’re delivering cleaner transport and more green spaces, with even more to come.

Billy Bragg - City Of Heroes Listen to City Of Heroes by Billy Bragg.

CITY OF HEROES, my song celebrating the courage of the people of Minneapolis defending their community from Tяump's goons, is now available to stream on numerous platforms via this link: bbragg.lnk.to/cityofheroes

Manchester can see off Nigel Farage - and slap the government in the face.

It's the ultimate two-for-one offer!

'Reform have a TV pundit, we've got Hannah the plumber' The Green Party has announced Hannah Spencer as its candidate for the Gorton and Denton by-election

"Reform have a TV pundit.

The Green Party have got Hannah the local plumber!"

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/reform-...

Brand new research project by the HIPR team: GROVE - Governance for Household-Level Environment and Health Data
A project to develop solutions for linking health and environmental data at household level to support prevention-focused research.
dareuk.org.uk/how-we-work/...

INTRODUCING! Hannah Spencer Green Party candidate for GORTON & DENTON Green Party Promoted by Chris Williams on behalf of the Green Party, both at PO Box 78066, London SE16 9GQ

Say hello to Hannah Spencer—councillor, plumber, greyhound lover and your Green Party candidate for Gorton and Denton 💚

Huge congratulations Hannah!! What a brilliant choice - someone who knows & loves the city, lived there all her life, & 100% committed to delivering the very best for residents. On my way to campaign in Gorton and Denton right now. We can do this!! 💚 @mcrgreenparty.bsky.social
@greenparty.org.uk

Brilliant letter in The Economist from Professor Ian Wray
Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place, University of Liverpool
www.economist.com/letters/2026...

Home - Not in our name Not In our Name: Women in support of the trans+community

Some reasons to feel positive today. Well done to all those women who push back on legal challenges, and push through resolutions

notinourname.org.uk

Today we launch our co-produced report with Resolution Foundation. Participants from CR shaped many of the discussions and recommendations that you will find within the report. We call for structural and cultural changes to UC that could drastically improve interactions with the system. Read below👇