Emla Fitzsimons is a Research Fellow, attached to the Centre for Evaluation of Development Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She worked at the IFS for 14 years prior to taking up the position of Professor of Economics and Director of the Millennium Cohort Study at the Institute of Education. Her research on early childhood aims at understanding how early experiences and parental investments affect longer-term outcomes. For instance, she is using the Millennium Cohort Study to understand the impacts of breastfeeding on outcomes later on in childhood. She led a project in Colombia that implemented and evaluated a home visiting programme, with the aim of surveying the children through time and understanding the longer term effects of the programme. She has extensive research analysing how policies affect young people's schooling and labour market choices – including programmes in the UK and Colombia providing subsidies to stay on in post-compulsory schooling, and the system of higher education finance in the UK
