Our funders

Our work is mainly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In addition to this, we receive funding from other organisations for certain specific projects.

Here you can find out more about how our work is funded.

Running our cohort studies

The ESRC provides most of the funding for our core work of running our four cohort studies; collecting data from cohort members and making it available to researchers. Our current ESRC grant is for five years, from 2015-2020, and includes the following study sweeps:

• The 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) at age 62 (2020),
• The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) at age 46 (2016 – 2018) and at age 50 (2020), and
• The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) at age 17 (2018-19).

We receive additional funding for each of our studies from a number of other sources:

• The Medical Research Council and the National Institutes of Health (in the USA) help fund the NCDS.
• The British Heart Foundation provides funding for the BCS70.
• All our studies receive funding from various government departments
• Our host institution, the UCL Institute of Education, also supports our work.

ESRC grant reference number: ES/M001660/1

Conducting research

The ESRC is also funding our Cross-Cohort Research Programme (CCRP). This three-year research programme (CCRP) is a major initiative involving leading researchers from CLS, together with national and international collaborators. It uses data from our own four cohort studies, as well as other studies including the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development, to compare the lives of people across the UK. Findings from the CCRP so far have raised important issues for policymakers and practitioners.

A number of other research funders and third sector organisations also support our research projects. These include the Academy of Medical Science, the British Heart Foundation, the Health Foundation and Wellcome.

ESRC grant reference number: ES/M008584/1