1970 British Cohort Study

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Introduction Sweeps Latest from BCS70 Study features Data access Response and handling missing data Substudies Cohort profile Principal Investigator

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.

What’s in the study?

Over the course of cohort members’ lives, BCS70 has collected information on health, physical, educational and social development, and economic circumstances among other factors.

BCS70 has become a vital source of evidence on key policy areas such as social mobility, education, training and employment, and economic insecurity.

What has the study found?

This invaluable study has resulted in important findings at each stage of life.

Research based on BCS70 has shown the importance of reading for pleasure for children’s cognitive development, especially in vocabulary and spelling, but also in maths.

Findings from the cohort members’ school years continue to inform the education debates of today. The study has revealed that grammar schools have been no more successful than comprehensives at helping to ensure pupils gained a university degree.

Today, research using BCS70 has shown a strong link between childhood disadvantage and adult mental wellbeing for this generation.

Who funds the study?

BCS70 is core funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

BCS70 sweeps

Since the birth survey in 1970 there have been 11 sweeps of all cohort members. Click on a sweep below to learn more about the information collected. Data from the latest sweep, at age 51, is now available for research use.

Year
Age
1970
Birth
1975
5
1980
10
1986
16
1996
26
2000
30
2004
34
2008
38
2012
42
2016
46
2021
51
2026
56

Latest from BCS70

OPEN SCIENTIFIC CONSULTATION

Help shape the BCS70 Age 56 Sweep

CLS is seeking views on the content of the sweep from experts across the scientific, policy, third, and private sectors. This is an excellent opportunity to ensure the data are fit for purpose to answer key scientific and policy questions about ageing and other issues facing these generations.

WATCH AGAIN

BCS70 at age 51: explore the new data

Wednesday 19 March | 12:00-13:00 GMT

The recording of this introductory webinar explores the new data available from BCS70 at age 51. Discover the value of this national cohort study for research into midlife and ageing, and learn about opportunities it opens for cross-cohort comparisons.

News

1970 British Cohort Study Age 51 data now available

6 March 2025 Data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) Age 51 Sweep are now available to download from the UK Data Service.

Special features of this study

Sample design

BCS70 follows the lives of all people born in England, Scotland and Wales in one particular week in 1970. Those born in Northern Ireland were included in the birth sweep, but were not followed up in any of the subsequent sweeps.

During the birth sweep, information was collected about 16,568 babies born in England, Scotland and Wales, and a further 628 born in Northern Ireland who were not followed up subsequently. At ages 5, 10 and 16, the sample was augmented with those who had been born overseas in the relevant week and subsequently moved to Great Britain. This resulted in 79 new recruits at age 5, 294 at age 10 and 65 at 16.

Biomedical data

The Age 46 sweep has collected extensive information on health to support biomedical and biosocial research.

The sweep collected objective measures of anthropometry (height, weight, body fat, waist and hip circumference), blood pressure/pulse, grip strength, balance, and blood samples (for analysis of cholesterol and hba1c, storage for future analyses and DNA extraction). In addition, participants wore an ActivPal device for 7 days to measure physical and sedentary activity and completed an online questionnaire about their diet.

Health has been a continual focus of BCS70, but the Age 46 sweep was the first time that objective measures of health have been collected since childhood. The data collected will provide a thorough assessment of health in mid-life, and when combined with data from previous sweeps will allow for detailed examinations of the predictors of mid-life health status. Cross cohort comparisons will be possible with the 1958 National Child Development Study biomedical sweep.

Children of cohort members

The Age 34 sweep had an emphasis on parenting and children, with cohort members’ own offspring taking part in the sweep.

At age 34, a randomly allocated 1 in 2 sample of cohort members completed an additional interview module and a paper self-completion questionnaire about each of their children.

Cohort members’ children aged over 10 also completed their own questionnaires and a series of cognitive assessments, which allows for the study of transfer of ability from one generation to the next.

Partnership histories 

Partnership histories are available in a longitudinal dataset which contains information about live-in partnerships lasting one month or more, from age 26 to 46.

The dataset includes data on partnership type (cohabitation and/or marriage), start and end dates, duration, outcome and if relevant whether divorced and divorce dates. A similar dataset is available for NCDS, which enables users to conduct cross-cohort comparisons.

Cognitive ability

BCS70 has measured cognition since childhood, allowing researchers to track cognitive development through life.

It is valuable for studying factors associated with differing levels of cognition, trajectories of cognitive ability, and the effect of cognitive ability on other aspects of life.

Cognition was first measured at age 5 and then throughout childhood at ages 10 and 16. In adulthood, basic skills assessments were conducted at age 34, and a vocabulary assessment was conducted at age 42. The Age 46 sweep included assessments of memory, executive function and concentration.

Social mobility

BCS70 is a leading source of evidence on social mobility, with information on work and income across the life course.

During the childhood sweeps, information was collected about parental occupations and income. Cohort members have themselves provided detailed information about their own occupations and income during each adult survey, making BCS70 ideal for studying how people move up and down the social ladder.

Similar information collected in the other cohort studies gives researchers the opportunity to examine how social mobility has changed between generations.

Linked administrative data

In the Age 42 Sweep, cohort members were asked for consent to link health and economic data to the survey data. Cohort members could agree to both, one or neither.

Some data have been linked and are available to access:

Health
Linked health data are available to access through the UK Data Service from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) in England for 1997-2022 (the latest deposit includes COVID-related ICD-10 codes) as well as linked health data from Scottish Medical Records (SMR) for 2000-2015 (outpatient, inpatient and day care, maternity, Prescribing Information System). A range of up-to-date linked health data (such as HES, mental health, cancer) for England and Wales are also available to access through the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC).

Economic
The UK LLC will soon be linking records kept by the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs, including about benefit claims, participation in employment programmes, jobs, earnings, tax and National Insurance.

 

COVID-19 Surveys

Three waves of data collection were carried out across BCS70 and four other national cohort studies during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Find out more information on the cross-cohort Covid-19 Surveys, including topics covered, response and how to access the data.

Data access

We’ve published guidance to help users find out what’s in our data.

Most BCS70 data are available through the UK Data Service. Visit the UK Data Service study page for BCS70 [SN 200001].

Response and missingness

View the level of response for every major BCS70 sweep.

Find out more

Substudies

In addition to the main BCS70 sweeps there have been a number of substudies:

Cohort profiles

Sullivan, A, Brown, M, Hamer, M and Ploubidis, G
Cohort Profile Update: The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)
International Journal of Epidemiology, July 2022
Read the full paper
Elliott, J and Shepherd, P
Cohort Profile: 1970 British Birth Cohort (BCS70)
International Journal of Epidemiology, volume 35, issue 4, August 2006, pages 836–843
Read the full paper

Visit the CLS Bibliography

Our online Bibliography is an excellent resource for finding publications based on data from BCS70. It includes thousands of publications which use data from our four studies, and is searchable by study, year, author, journal name, title and abstract.

Principal Investigator

George Ploubidis Professor of Population Health and Statistics and Principal Investigator of the National Child Development Study and 1970 British Cohort Study

Full UCL profile

Phone: 020 7612 6107
Email: g.ploubidis@ucl.ac.uk

George is Professor of Population Health and Statistics at the UCL Social Research Institute and currently holds the posts of Principal Investigator of the National Child Development Study and 1970 British Cohort Study at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Prior to joining UCL he held posts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Cambridge. George is a multidisciplinary quantitative social scientist and a longitudinal population surveys methodologist. His main research interests relate to socioeconomic and demographic determinants of health over the life course and the mechanisms that underlie generational differences in health and mortality. His methodological work in longitudinal surveys focusses on applications for handling missing data, causal inference and measurement error.

News

Find the latest developments and insights from across all our longitudinal studies.

CLS Bibliography

The CLS Bibliography is a searchable database of published work based on our cohort studies. Search by keyword, author, date range and journal.

Data access & training

Data from our studies are mainly available through the UK Data Service. We run training to support researchers who are interested in using our studies in their work.

Contact us

Centre for Longitudinal Studies
UCL Social Research Institute

20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL

Email: clsdata@ucl.ac.uk

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