Dr. Yekaterina Chzhen
Assistant Professor, Sociology

Projects

• Title
  • Lessons from the pandemic: Socio-economic inequalities in children' education and mental health
• Funding Agency
  • Entreprise Ireland
• Date From
  • 2022
• Date To
  • 2023

• Title
  • GenerationZ - current perspectives on adolescent mental health
• Funding Agency
  • Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions Fund 2023-25
• Date From
  • 2023

• Title
  • Understanding family and community vulnerabilities in transition to net zero
• Summary
  • This project proposes a programme of research and methodological innovation to understand the risks to, and vulnerabilities of, families and communities in the transition to a net zero carbon society; and to build a usable and dynamic framework that enables policy makers, local and national stakeholders to strategically plan for and manage transition in such a way that it mitigates and reduces inequalities, and places equitable family and community outcomes at its heart.
• Funding Agency
  • Nuffield Foundation
• Date From
  • 2021
• Date To
  • 2022

• Title
  • Scoping Review to inform the development of a potential new birth cohort for Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study
• Funding Agency
  • DCEDIY/UCD
• Date From
  • July 2021
• Date To
  • March 2022

• Title
  • Generation Z
• Summary
  • Current perspectives on adolescent mental health: within-individual, time trends and cross-national differences
• Funding Agency
  • European Commission
• Date From
  • 2022
• Date To
  • 2024

• Title
  • Consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for children in Ireland and the United Kingdom
• Funding Agency
  • Arts & Social Sciences Benefaction Fund 2020/21
• Date From
  • 2021
• Date To
  • 2023

• Title
  • An Interdisciplinary Child Well-Being Network (ICWBN) to study the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in Ireland and the United Kingdom
• Funding Agency
  • Irish Research Council
• Date From
  • 2021
• Date To
  • 2022

• Title
  • Social inequalities, parental involvement and schools: Evidence from PISA 2018
• Summary
  • This project investigates the roles of the home learning environment, children's and parents' behaviours and school characteristics in explaining the socio-economic status (SES) differences in educational performance of 15-year-old children in reading, mathematics and science across the OECD. The study analyses data from the 2018 round of the Progress in International Student Assessment (PISA).
• Funding Agency
  • Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund
• Date From
  • 2020
• Date To
  • 2022

• Title
  • Child well-being in rich countries: role of parenting, poverty and policy
• Summary
  • This project will examine the links between exposure to poverty and children's education, health and life satisfaction in Ireland, Scotland and Australia during the period before, during and after the recent global economic crisis. Drawing on the two main theoretical approaches to explaining the impact of poverty on children, the study will draw on nationally representative longitudinal data from child cohort studies to address three overarching research questions. First, the study will examine to what extent the timing, duration and type of poverty throughout childhood explain variations in children's well-being. Second, it will clarify the key mechanisms through which household resources affect child outcomes, including parental behaviours, relationships and well-being as well as children's own actions. Third, it will account for the role of national economic conditions. The project will offer insights into what, how and when policies and interventions can be most effective in reducing poverty and mitigating its impacts.
• Funding Agency
  • Trinity College Dublin
• Date From
  • 2020
• Date To
  • 2024

• Title
  • Child well-being in rich countries
• Summary
  • Comparative study of child well-being (education, health and life satisfaction) in 41 countries of the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. Key findings to be published in the forthcoming Innocenti Report Card 16 (2020)
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2018
• Date To
  • 2019

• Title
  • Family-friendly policies in rich countries
• Summary
  • Family-friendly policies matter because they help children to get a better start in life and help parents to find the right balance between their commitments at work and at home. Yet even some of the world's richest countries fail to offer comprehensive solutions to all families. The study focuses on two key policies: childcare leave for parents and early childhood education and care for preschool children. It reviews these policies in the 41 high- and middle-income countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) or the European Union (EU), using the most recent comparable data on hand. The analysis includes national breastfeeding rates and policies as well as the quality of preschool education, where comparable indicators are available. The report "Are the world's richest countries family friendly?" was published on June 13, 2019
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2019
• Date To
  • 2019

• Title
  • Educational inequalities among children in rich countries
• Summary
  • This project focuses on educational inequalities in 41 of the world's richest countries, all of which are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and/or the European Union (EU). Using the most recent data available, it examines inequalities across childhood - from access to preschool to expectations of post-secondary education - and explores in depth the relationships between educational inequality and factors such as their parents' occupations, migration background, the child's gender and school characteristics. Main findings published in Innocenti Report Card 15 (2018).
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2017
• Date To
  • 2018

• Title
  • Sustainable Development Goals and child well-being in rich countries
• Summary
  • The study focuses on child well-being in the context of sustainable development across 41 countries of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It seeks to bring the SDG targets for children in high-income countries into meaningful operation (while staying true to the ambitions of the global agenda) and to establish a point of departure for reviewing the SDG framework in these contexts. It focuses on those goals and targets with most direct relevance to the well-being of children in high-income settings. Where appropriate, it adapts the agreed SDG indicator, the better to reflect the problems facing children in such countries. The results therefore highlight the new challenges set by the SDGs. Main findings published in Innocenti Report Card 14 (2017).
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2016
• Date To
  • 2017

• Title
  • Impact of the economic crisis and austerity on child poverty in rich countries
• Summary
  • The 2008 financial crisis triggered the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Many OECD countries responded to the crisis by reducing social spending. Through 11 diverse country case studies (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States), this edited volume describes the evolution of child poverty and material well-being during the crisis, and links these outcomes with the responses by governments. The analysis underlines that countries with fragmented social protection systems were less able to protect the incomes of households with children at the time when unemployment soared. In contrast, countries with more comprehensive social protection cushioned the impact of the crisis on households with children, especially if they had implemented fiscal stimulus packages at the onset of the crisis. Although the macroeconomic 'shock' itself and the starting positions differed greatly across countries, while the responses by governments covered a very wide range of policy levers and varied with their circumstances, cuts in social spending and tax increases often played a major role in the impact that the crisis had on the living standards of families and children. Published by Oxford University Press in 2017.
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2015
• Date To
  • 2017

• Title
  • Inequality in child child well-being in rich countries
• Summary
  • This Report Card presents an overview of inequalities in child well-being in 41 countries of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It focuses on 'bottom-end inequality' - the gap between children at the bottom and those in the middle - and addresses the question 'how far behind are children being allowed to fall?' in income, education, health and life satisfaction. Main findings published in Innocenti Report Card 13 (2016).
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2015
• Date To
  • 2016

• Title
  • Economic crisis and child poverty in rich countries
• Summary
  • The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. Global output shrank between 2008 and 2009 in what became known as the Great Recession. The nature, duration and severity of the economic downturn varied across countries and regions. Emerging evidence indicates that children are likely to have suffered disproportionately because of falling household incomes (e.g. due to job losses; benefit cuts) and reduced access to quality services. Although the long-term impact of the economic crisis on children's life chances cannot yet be assessed, the study explores the various ways in which children have been affected by the economic crisis and government responses to it in the OECD and European Union countries. Output: Innocenti Report Card 12, Unicef flagship report, published in 2014.
• Funding Agency
  • UNICEF
• Date From
  • 2013
• Date To
  • 2014

• Title
  • Gender inequality in the labour market in the European Union
• Summary
  • Despite significant increases in female labour market participation and educational achievement in the EU in recent decades, women still trail men in terms of employment rates, earnings and occupational attainment. This thesis is about the interplay between the characteristics of individuals associated with productivity, abour market returns to these characteristics, and country-level work/family reconciliation policies in influencing female employment and gender inequalities in the labour market in the enlarged EU. It explores variations in the ways EU member states support individuals in combining work and family life and the extent to which these policies promote gender equality in the labour market in terms of pay and occupational attainment. The approach of the thesis is quantitative and comparative, based on the secondary analysis of micro social datasets and comparable policy indicators, using advanced statistical techniques. It is also multi-disciplinary, drawing on the literature and methods from the fields of labour economics and comparative social policy. Results from the study suggest that the existing work-family reconciliation policies in the EU have not caught up sufficiently with the dramatic advances in women's labour market position. To various extents, they retain elements of the traditional male breadwinner model. Even in the Nordic countries, which rank highest on most measures of gender equity in work/family reconciliation policies, women tend to earn less than men, on average, and to work in a narrower range of occupations than their male counterparts. At the other extreme, Eastern-European and Mediterranean countries tend to have more traditional gender-role attitudes and a policy environment less compatible with the dual-earner/dual-carer model of the family. However, women who work, particularly those who work full-time, typically enjoy more equality with men in terms of their wages and occupational attainment.
• Funding Agency
  • University of York
• Date From
  • 2007
• Date To
  • 2010

• Title
  • Electoral behaviour in the United Kingdom
• Summary
  • The project examines the importance of partisan preferences, government competency evaluations and economic perceptions in electoral behaviour in the United Kingdom during the period 1997-2010. Contrasting different theoretical models of vote choice, the study investigates the significance of leadership, economic problems and immigration for vote switching as well as the importance of objective economic conditions in partisan preferences and assessments of the economy. It uses longitudinal data from British election panel studies.
• Funding Agency
  • University of Oxford
• Date From
  • 2011
• Date To
  • 2013

• Title
  • The impact of tax credits on mothers' employment (UK)
• Summary
  • Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Working Tax Credit (WTC) were introduced in April 2003 to support families with children, reduce child poverty and make work pay for those on low incomes. These new credits are central to the Government's ambitious policy of reducing and eventually abolishing child poverty. This research investigated their impact on labour-market participation and the working hours of women with children. It also explored reasons for non-take-up of the tax credits among those eligible. The study used data from the three latest available rounds of interviews of the longitudinal Families and Children Study (FACS), 2002/03-2004/05. The methodology also has lessons for those interested in pinpointing the most appropriate way of modelling the impact of the new tax credits.
• Funding Agency
  • Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• Date From
  • 2006
• Date To
  • 2007

• Title
  • Evaluation of the Adult Learning Grant (UK)
• Summary
  • Evaluation of the Adult Learning Grant.
• Funding Agency
  • Department for Education and Skills; Learning and Skills Council (UK)
• Date From
  • 2005
• Date To
  • 2006

• Title
  • Study on housing exclusion: welfare policies, housing provision and labour markets
• Summary
  • The study aims to analyse the interactions between welfare regimes and housing systems. The first aim of the project is to establish the link between income poverty and housing outcomes, and the role that housing policy interventions play. The second aim of the project is to establish the link between employment status and housing outcomes, including whether the duration of unemployment or other forms of inactivity leads to worsening housing outcomes and whether the in-work poor experience different housing outcomes from the working poor. The third aim of the project is to establish whether housing systems assist or hinder employment, particularly for individuals seeking to enter the labour market. The fourth aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between welfare regimes and the scale and nature of homelessness, which is interpreted as being an extreme 'housing outcome'.
• Funding Agency
  • European Commission
• Date From
  • 2009
• Date To
  • 2010