Mary Reader

I’m a researcher at the London School of Economics, and I live in South London with a friend. During lockdown we binge-watched the US Office and I started knitting a patchwork quilt (which I dubbed the ‘Coronavirus quilt’) which I didn’t finish.

My research primarily works with numbers, and on the project I’ll be using big datasets to try to show the causal effects of the two-child limit. I’m also really excited to be doing some of the interviews and getting the opportunity to speak directly to families about their experiences. I’m hoping that the project will help to demonstrate the scale of the impact of recent welfare changes on larger families in both quantifiable and human terms, and encourage policymakers to think again.