Assessing and Monitoring Family Policy

The objective of the project, funded by the John Fell Fund, was to undertake a state of the art interdisciplinary review of data availability on family policy with a particular focus on the UK. The project also sought to amass and organise evidence on key family-related policy developments within and across countries, track and evaluate indicators and data for these developments, and develop the foundations for a comprehensive and up-to-date indicator/data set (template) on family policy and its development. The overall aim was to update thinking and practice on how to define, conceptualise and measure family policy and to put together, with the UK as a case study, a more up-to-date set of indicators and an appropriately complex way of conceptualising the field.

The outcome of the project is a database on UK family policy available at: https://familypolicyox.web.ox.ac.uk/. This presents standardised information on a range of family policies in the UK from 1997 to 2014 and beyond.  The policies included are parental leave, childcare policies and cash and tax allowances.

DSPI Principal Investigator: Professor Mary Daly

Funded by: John Fell OUP Fund

Completed: 2016