News and opinion

Welcome to our news and blogs section. Here you’ll find the latest developments and insights from across our longitudinal studies.

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News

Road to heavy drinking depends on social background, study shows

26 January 2017

Young adults from working class homes are more likely to drink heavily if they smoked during their teenage years, whereas their middle class peers start drinking excessively if they go on to higher education.

News

Generations of less advantaged children face higher risk of mid-life obesity, study finds

11 January 2017

Three generations of children from less privileged homes have reached middle age at greater risk of being overweight or obese than their better-off peers, according to findings published in PLOS Medicine.

Blog

Social inequalities – the report card

11 January 2017

How has the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) aided government understanding of the social inequalities faced by young people today?

News

Subject choices at GCSE may exacerbate social inequalities, study finds

9 December 2016

Young people from less advantaged homes may limit their options for further education unnecessarily when choosing their GCSE subjects.

News

Decades of educational expansion ‘had little effect on social mobility’

16 March 2016

The expansion of educational opportunities has not translated into better social mobility chances for those from less well-off families, according to findings from the 1946, 1958 and 1970 British birth cohort studies and Understanding Society.

News

Less able children from affluent homes escape risk of slipping down the social ladder

27 July 2015

Children from better-off families who show lower ability at age 5 are still more likely to succeed in the labour market than their brighter peers from poorer homes, according to a new report.

News

Government must set itself more challenging targets on social mobility, new research suggests

23 January 2014

Policymakers must focus on getting disadvantaged pupils’ performance above the average in order to improve social mobility, suggests a new study published by the Institute of Education (IOE), University of London.

News

Grandparents influence where you are on the social ladder

1 July 2013

For the first time, a study using data from the 1946, 1958 and 1970 birth cohort studies has suggested that the position of grandparents in the British class system has a direct effect on which class their grandchildren belong to. It has long been accepted that parents’ social standing has a strong influence on children’s […]

News

Breastfeeding boosts ability to climb social ladder

25 June 2013

Breastfeeding not only boosts children’s chances of climbing the social ladder, but it also reduces the chances of downwards mobility, suggests study based on 1958 and 1970 cohort data. The findings are based on changes in the social class of  17,419 members of the 1958 National Child Development Study and 16,771 members of the 1970 […]

News

Social mobility depends on parents’ education and social class, not parenting styles, study finds

13 May 2013

Parents’ qualifications, social class and wellbeing have a bigger effect on their children’s development than poor parenting, according to researchers from the Institute of Education, University of London. A new study based on data from almost 14,000 seven-year-olds included in the Millennium Cohort Study has explored the link between children’s cognitive ability and their social and […]

News

Parliamentary report on social mobility uses evidence from 1958, 1970 and millennium cohort studies

2 May 2012

An all-party parliamentary group has launched a report outlining seven “truths” about social mobility and the challenges they pose for policy-makers.

News

ESRC social mobility briefings draw on evidence from birth cohort studies

21 March 2012

Briefings draw on evidence from cohort studies to show how education, health, parenting and poverty influence social mobility.

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