About
Using longitudinal data collected from across more than seven decades, this project examines the relationship between people’s physical and mental health and their educational and occupational outcomes, both over the lifecourse and between generations.
Principal Investigator
Alice SullivanProject dates
July 2018 – September 2021Funder
Health Foundation – visit the project page on the Health Foundation website.
On this page:
It is well established that where people start in life can cast a long shadow over their educational and employment prospects, and consequently their physical and mental health. However, what is less well known is how health, both physical and mental, impacts on important transitional periods in people’s lives, from school entrance to higher education participation, from finding a job to getting married.
With the full repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic still not fully realised, understanding the relationship between people’s physical and mental health, their employment and finances, has never been more pressing.
Through comparisons between different nationally representative cohorts, born between 1946 and 2000-02, this project investigates whether the links between people’s physical and mental health, their educational and occupational prospects, and their family and social lives have changed across time and between generations.
Given the major changes in society since the second world war – from increasing inequalities in wealth and income to the convergence of gender roles, from the decrease in rates of smoking to the marked rise in the prevalence of obesity and depression – this project also looks to shed light on the potential risk factors driving poor physical and mental health.
Using data from the Medical Research Council’s National Survey of Health and Development (1946 birth cohort), the National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study, and the Millennium Cohort Study, the research utilises rich information collected from study members across their lives, including self-reported data and objective measures of health. It also uses information collected from those study members who took part in a series of web surveys during the COVID-19 pandemic.
THE CONVERSATION BLOG
People with a history of poor mental health were more likely to face psychological and financial problems during the pandemic
23 March 2023
NEWS
Poor mental health doubled likelihood of experiencing financial hardship during pandemic
19 January 2023
News
Women who experience early menopause spend 4 months fewer in work during their early 50s
24 January 2022
PANEL DISCUSSION
The economic and social value of health from childhood to later life
15 September 2021
Association between psychological distress trajectories from adolescence to midlife and mental health during the pandemic: evidence from two British birth cohorts
Psychological Medicine
Adult life-course trajectories of psychological distress and economic outcomes in midlife during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from the 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
The consequences of early menopause and menopause symptoms for labour market participation
Social Science and Medicine
Taking the Pulse of Nations: a Biometric Measure of Well-being
National Bureau of Economic Research (working paper)
The role of parental and child physical and mental health on behavioural and emotional adjustment in mid-childhood: a comparison of two generations of British children born 30 years apart
Longitudinal and Life Course Studies
The relationship between child behaviour problems at school entrance and teenage vocabulary acquisition: a comparison of two generations of British children born 30 years apart
British Educational Research Journal
Teenage Conduct Problems: A Lifetime of Disadvantage in the Labour Market?
IZA Institute of Labour Economics (working paper)
Unemployment Disrupts Sleep: evidence from the United States and Europe
Economics and Human Biology
Biden, COVID and Mental Health in America
National Bureau of Economic Research (working paper)
The consequences of chronic pain in mid-life: evidence from the National Child Development Survey
QSS working paper series
Does pain lead to job loss? A Panel Study for Germany
National Bureau of Economic Research (working paper)
Risk factors for early natural menopause: evidence from the 1958 and 1970 British Cohorts
medRxiv (pre-print)
Association between psychological distress trajectories from adolescence to midlife and mental health during the pandemic: evidence from two British birth cohorts (2021)
medRxiv (pre-print)
Alice Sullivan
Professor of Sociology and Head of Research for the Social Research Institute
Sam Parsons
Principal Research Fellow
George Ploubidis
Professor of Population Health and Statistics and Principal Investigator of the National Child Development Study and 1970 British Cohort Study
Emla Fitzsimons
Professor of Economics and Director of the Millennium Cohort Study
Gabriella Conti
Professor of Economics
David Bann
Associate Professor in Population Health, Strategic lead of social science genetics
Vanessa Moulton
Senior Research Fellow
Darina Peycheva
Survey Manager
Alex Bryson
Professor of Quantitative Social Science, UCL Social Research Institute
Rebecca Hardy
Professor of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics at Loughborough University and CLS harmonisation lead
The researchers used data from the following cohort studies in this project:
1958 National Child Development Study
The 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) is following the lives of more than 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1958.
1970 British Cohort Study
The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) is following the lives of around 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1970.
Millennium Cohort Study
The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is following the lives of around 19,000 young people born across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000-02.
Centre for Longitudinal Studies
UCL Social Research Institute
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Email: clsdata@ucl.ac.uk
