Does it pay to be nice? Does sharing household chores and childcare matter to happy marriage? Why do girls do better than boys at school? Does the fact that your parents smoked mean you will? These are just some of the many questions being addressed at the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) Conference this week.

More than 60 academics will present their research at the event which is hosted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex across three days from July 9-11.

The conference provides an international forum for the exchange of research based on longitudinal data (surveys that interview the same people annually over time) such as the BHPS, which has been run by ISER since 1991. The event aims to bring together people from different disciplines ranging from economics, sociology, politics, social psychology, or research and survey methods.

Leading US quantitative sociologist, Professor Thomas DiPrete from Columbia University is the conference keynote speaker. His address will be on The rising gender gap in educational attainment.

Full details of the conference programme are available at www.iser.essex.ac.uk.