Working papers

Unemployment, apprenticeships and training – does it pay to stay on at school?- CLS working paper 1986/13

Joan Payne uses data from the National Child Development Study to compare the progress up to age 23 of young people who reached 16 in March 1974 and who left full time education at 16, 17 or 18. Later leavers had higher unemployment rates on first entering the labour market because of rising national unemployment, but in the long term had a clear advantage.  Those who left at 17 or 18 with qualifications no better than those of minimum age leavers suffered no long term disadvantage in comparison with the latter, despite their loss of potential work experience, and some groups had lower unemployment rates in the long term than minimum age leavers with equally good qualifications. Apprenticeships were more common among later leavers than expected, and later leavers compared favourably with early leavers in terms of other forms of in?work training. It is concluded that the ‘non?academic sixth’ could have a useful role alongside YTS.

A note on household income data in NCDS3- CLS working paper 1986/12

John Micklewright discusses issues to do with analysis of income data at NCDS4 (age 23 follow-up) in cases where the household income information at the previous weep (NCDS3, age 16) was not present.   His methodology aims to divide cases into ‘usable’ and ‘non-usable’ categories

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, income, young adult, household, item non-response.

The NCDS5 development programme- CLS working paper 1986/11

Peter Shepherd outlines in October 1986 the detailed plans for the next follow-up of NCDS, which took place eventually in 1991.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, fieldwork, follow-up, survey

Transitions in young adulthood- CLS working paper 1986/10

Kathleen Kiernan looks at transitions from school to the labour force by combining information from NCDS and the Labour Force Survey.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, employment, training, qualifications, apprenticeship.

Drop-out from apprenticeship – an application of survival methods to grouped data- CLS working paper 1986/8

Dougal Hutchison looks at reasons for drop-out and finds that age at entry, region and marital status did not affect the probability of drop-out, but strong predictors were trade of apprenticeship, size of firm, educational level and whether the apprentice had signed articles.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, apprenticeship, education, qualifications, drop-out, trade, firm.

Event history and survival analysis in the social sciences- CLS working paper 1986/9

Dougal Hutchison illustrates the concepts involved in looking at discrete series of events in longitudinal studies, with reference to the NCDS cohort: additive models of survival time or hazard; proportional hazards; the semi-parametric approach and grouped distinct failure times.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, time series, survival analysis, Cox proportional hazards.

Social class changes in weight-for-height between childhood and early adulthood- CLS working paper 1986/6

Chris Power and C. Moynihan find that social class differences in the prevalence of overweight and obesity were found to be negligible in childhood but marked by early adulthood, with a greater percentage of overweight and obesity in lower social classes. This difference was three-fold among obese men and two-fold among obese women when respondents were classified on the basis of their own occupation.  But a longer-term effect of early class backgrounds also emerged. Children from manual backgrounds were more likely to become overweight and obese young adults (7 per cent of those with average weight-for-height at age 7) compared with their non-manual contemporaries (3 per cent).  They were also more likely to remain overweight or obese through to early adulthood.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, obesity, overweight, BMI, social class, gender.

Response to a national longitudinal study – policy and academic implications in the study of change- CLS working paper 1986/7

Dougal Hutchison looks at reasons (other than non-response) why final sample sizes in longitudinal research may be much lower than the target population of the study: for instance, restrictions of analyses to sub-populations, and losses in the course of operationalizing concepts.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, attrition, bias, loss-to-follow-up, sub-populations, item non-response,

Leaving the parental home – an analysis of early housing careers- CLS working paper 1986/4

Gill Jones’s analysis of early housing careers in the NCDS 1958 cohort looks at factors such as movement from school to work, family formation and the effects of social class and gender on early housing decisions in the context of  leaving the parental home.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, housing, parental home, social class, gender.

Stratification in youth- CLS working paper 1986/5

Gill Jones’s research looks at what has happened to young people aged 23 in the NCDS 1958 cohort since they left full-time education, looking at notions such as youth as a transition, and the place of young adults in the social structure.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, housing, social class, gender.

Effects of ability grouping in secondary schools in Great Britain- CLS working paper 1986/3

Alan C. Kerckhoff’s research compares those in the NCDS 1958 cohort who have been  educated in ability groups with those who have not.   Covariates are social background, parental influences, school influences, and contingencies such as residential moves from birth to age 11.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, education, streaming, ability

Health and social mobility during the early years of life- CLS working paper 1986/2

Chris Power,  Ken Fogelman and John Fox describe a DHSS-funded project concerned with relationships between social class, social mobility and health during the early years of life.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, social class, SES, social mobility, health, young adult.