Since completing her master’s degree (Analysis and Policy in Economics) at Paris School of Economics, Alex has been based at Ined, working with different teams in furthering our understanding the formation of inequalities in childhood. In 2024-2024, Alex took part in the European Doctoral School of Demography, the flagship training 1-year programme of the European Association for Population Studies, and gained access to the doctoral programme at Sciences Po, with a doctoral contract from Ined. Her co-directors are Lidia Panico (Sciences Po CNRS) and Anne Solaz (Ined).

Presentations

• 2025, “Covid-19 and Health-Related Behaviours: How Did Contextual and Individual Experiences of Deprivation Affect Health-Related Behaviours During the Covid-19 Pandemic in England?”, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2025, Washington DC. 
• 2025, “Do Parents Parent Boys and Girls Differently? On the Way to Understanding Gender Gaps in Child Development in the UK, the US, France, and Germany.”, 16th Conference of Young Demographers, February 2025, Prague.
• 2024, “Sex Differentials in Early Childhood Hygiene: A Comparative Study of France and of the UK.” Early Career Scholars’ Master Class on Families and Child Development and Well-being, June 2024, Edinburgh.
• 2024, “Sex Differentials in Early Childhood Hygiene: A Comparative Study of France and of the UK.” European Population Conference, June 2024, Edinburgh. 
• 2024, “Sex Differentials in Early Childhood Hygiene: A Comparative Study of France and of the UK.” Séminaire Jeunes Chercheurs, March 2024, Ined, Paris.
• 2023, “Comparative work on toilet training in France and in the UK: gender and social variations.” Policy Evaluation and Research Unit lunch seminar, November 2023, Manchester.
• 2023, “Parental care during the first year of life: gender and social variations in practices and tastes.” Children of the noughties: a conference to celebrate 21 years of the Millennium Cohort Study, June 2023, London.

This thesis seeks to quantify how much gendered parenting (expectations and attitudes, parental role modelling, and children’s access and exposure to family resources) shapes the development of gender gaps in early childhood, particularly in academic achievement and socio-emotional skills. It makes four main contributions: 1. it takes a holistic approach to parenting with structural equation models; 2. it combines methods more typical in demography and economics with theories from sociology and psychology in an interdisciplinary approach; 3. it contributes comparative evidence outside of the US, for France and for the UK using longitudinal birth cohorts (Elfe and MCS respectively); 4. it employs a quasi-experiment method (RDD) to better understand effects of income shocks on parenting, with potential to offer policy recommendations. This project sheds light on the intersection of gender and social class in the development of young children, little explored in current literature.

What role do parents play in shaping gender inequalities in childhood? A comparative study of France and the United Kingdom. (provisional title)

In 2023, COORDINATE Transnational Access Visits grant, in support of the preparatory phase of Europe’s first cross-national accelerated birth cohort survey of child well-being Growing Up in Digital Europe  (GUIDE).

• 2024 (with Dräger, J., Washbrook, E., Schneider, T., Akabayashi, H., Keizer, R., Solaz, A., Waldfogel, J., de la Rie, S., Kameyama, Y., Kwon, S. J., Nozaki, K., Perinetti Casoni, V., Sano, S., & Shikishima, C.) “Cross-national differences in socioeconomic achievement inequality in early primary school: The role of parental education and income in six countries.” AERA Open.
• 2024 (with Solaz A., Panico L., Dräger J., Schneider T., Olczyk M., Washbrook E., Perinetti Casoni V., Kwon S., & Waldfogel J.) “Does Family Structure Account for Child Achievement Gaps by Parental Education? Findings for England, France, Germany and the United States.” Population and Development Review.
• 2024 (with Berger, L., Panico L., Thévenon O.) “Parental emotional support and adolescent well-being: A cross-national examination of socio-economic and gender gaps based on PISA 2018 surveys”, OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, No. 20, OECD Publishing, Paris. 
• 2023 (with Dräger, J., Schneider, T., Olczyk, M., Solaz, A., Washbrook, E., Perinetti Casoni, V, Kwon S. J., & Waldfogel, J.) “The relevance of tracking and social school composition for growing achievement gaps by parental education in lower secondary school: a longitudinal analysis in France, Germany, the United States, and England.” European Sociological Review.