Whilst institutional change following the eurozone crisis is well documented, the mechanisms underlying this change remain less understood. This article examines how EU officials negotiated the routi....

Romantic repartnering in later life has received substantial scholarly and public attention in light of population aging and changes in family dynamics. In the United States, the importance of househ...

The Government’s long-awaited Child Poverty Strategy is due next month, close to, or contemporaneous with, the Autumn Budget. There have been some welcome announcements already: the over-indexation of...

The Government’s long-awaited Child Poverty Strategy is due next month, close to, or contemporaneous with, the Autumn Budget. There have been some welcome announcements already: the over-indexation of...

With less than a month to go before the Budget, the group have written to Rachel Reeves to warn that more than half of larger families could fall into poverty as a direct result of the cap.

With less than a month to go before the Budget, the group have written to Rachel Reeves to warn that more than half of larger families could fall into poverty as a direct result of the cap.

We're always hearing about the "elite", but what does the data tell us about who runs Britain?

How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.

LSE Collaborative Studentship with Trades Union Congress

Find out more about the BJS conference 2026, which will provide an in-person platform for academics across the discipline to advance their research.

6.30pm Thurs 9 Oct | Tarsis Brito, Maya Goodfellow, Luke de Noronha | Ticket Required | Free public event at LSE

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