Almudena Sevilla is a Professor of Economic and Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy at LSE and is currently the Chair of the Royal Economic Society Women's Committee. She has also held positions at University College London, Queen Mary University, University of Oxford, University of Essex Institute for Social and Economic Research, and the Congressional Budget Office in Washington DC. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University in 2004 in the fields of family and population economics and econometrics. Almudena is an applied micro economist whose research focuses on the areas of gender, child development, and human capital. She teaches courses in these areas at the Graduate and Undergraduate Level.
Almudena’s current project, PARENTIME, has received Eur. 2M funding from the European Union as part of the ERC Consolidator Grant (2018-2022). The objective of PARENTIME is to develop new socio-economic theories that unpack the detailed mechanisms driving the inter-generational transmission of inequality. High socio-economic status parents consistently produce high socio-economic status children. The question is how. Because of data limitations and theoretical traditions, the literature has focused on a narrow conceptualization of parental time (limited to the quantity of time spent with children in different kinds of activities), and a narrow set of child outcomes (limited to educational outcomes and socio-behavioral outcomes during the early years). Thus, while the results from this literature are informative at documenting the phenomenon of inter-generational transmission of human capital, they remain silent about the mechanisms underlying the process. PARENTIME aims to close this gap.
Key Published Work
Nollenberger, N., Rodríguez-Planas, N., & Sevilla, A. (2016). The math gender gap: The role of culture. American Economic Review, 106(5), 257-61. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161121
Amuedo-Dorantes, C., Arenas-Arroyo, E., & Sevilla, A. (2018). Immigration enforcement and economic resources of children with likely unauthorized parents. Journal of Public Economics, 158, 63-78. Read here.
Borra, C., González, L., & Sevilla, A. (2016). Birth timing and neonatal health. American Economic Review, 106(5), 329-32. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161123
Sevilla, A., & Smith, S. (2020). Baby steps: The gender division of childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36(Supplement_1), S169-S186, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/graa027
Sevilla, A., Phimister, A., Krutikova, S., Kraftman, L., Farquharson, C., Dias, MC, Cattan, S., & Andrew, A.(2020). How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?(IFS Briefing Note; No. 290).
https://doi. org/10.1920/BN. IFS. 2020. BN0290
Sevilla, A. (2020). Gender economics: an assessment. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36(4), 725-742.
https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article-abstract/36/4/725/6124296