Working papers

Pamela Di Salvo’s analysis looks at: household, partnership and childbearing; economic and occupational status; income and benefits; adult basic skill difficulties; qualifications, health status, attitudes to life so far and plans for the future.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, housing, family home, occupatoin, employment, SES, basic skills, income, partnership, family formation.

The paper models the transition rates between the three main housing tenures in Britain. “Surprises” like partnership break-up, acquisition of a partner, and spells of unemployment are found to have large impacts on tenure changes. Through their effects on these transition rates, variation in the rate of arrival of such surprises affects the “equilbrium” housing tenure distribution of people. The transition rate models are estimated using two sources of longitudinal data: the first four waves of the British Household Panel Study (1991–1994) and data for the 1958 birth cohort from the National Child Development Study, covering their housing experiences from the ages of 16–33.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, childbearing, career break, employment gap, child care.

Susan Macran, Heather Joshi and Shirley Dex use longitudinal data from two cohorts of women born in 1946 and 1958 to describe the break in employment experienced by women after childbearing. This is reducing in length. The decline in the employment gap, observed for women born in 1958 has largely been confined to those women who delayed their childbearing until their late twenties and early thirties and women who were more highly educated. What seems to be occurring is a polarisation between mothers in the more and the less privileged social groups, in terms of their ability to enter and stay in paid employment once they have responsibility for children. Although mothers at both ends of the social scale have to balance the dual demands of paid and domestic work, older and better educated mothers are more likely to be in higher status occupations, to earn adequate income to pay for childcare and to be better placed to take advantage of any changes in employer provisions for working mothers.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, childbearing, career break, employment gap, child care.

This contribution from Dick Wiggins and C.J. Wale presents a multilevel analysis of intergenerational processes. The methodological issues of standardization and selection effects are considered. The results show that age standardization does not work by itself, but age must be introduced in the models as well.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, intergenerational, multilevel modelling, age standardisation, selection effects

Clare Ward,  Angela Dale and Heather Joshi’s research acknowledges that the availability of childcare is an important factor in enabling motherhood to be combined with paid employment. Their findings use evidence from the fifth sweep of the National Child Development Study to analyse the use of childcare by a cohort of employed women who were aged 33 in 1991. There is a heavy reliance on informal care by women in partnerships and also by lone mothers.  Formal care is most heavily used by women whoseyoungestchildisunderfive,especiallyifthewomanworks full-time. Reported costs of child care represent nearly a quarter of net weekly earnings for mothers with  a  child under five. Formal child care is shown to play an important role in facilitating women’s full-time employment.Full-time employment is the route by which women achieve financial independence from their partner.  Italso incrases the likelihood of contributing to an occupational pension which, in turn, has implications for financial independence in later life. However, the majority of women in this cohort do not take the full-time route.  For these women, low earnings potential and part-time working make paid child care uneconomic and reinforces both their role as minor financial contributors within the family.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, women’s work, childbearing, gender equality, employment.

Hugh Davies and heather Joshi report on exploratory studies of how three main sources of women’s income vary over the life-cycle in contemporary Britain. Two of these income sources are obvious: the labour market and the state. The third possible source is transactions within the family. If couples pool their incomes, and share the proceeds equally, the partner with the lower one will be compensated by half the original difference between them.  As it is normally wives who earns less from the labour market plus the state, they would normally be the benficiaries of income pooling, but of particular interest here are the earnings wives forego in the process of rearing children.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, women’s work, childbearing, gender equality, employment.

Clare Ward, Heather Joshi and Angela Dale challenge the common belief that the generation of women who entered the labour force since the 1970s no longer need social protection as their husbands’ dependants. They show that although improved opportunities have given some women greater economic independence this does not apply in full to all women, and therefore it is important to establish how many women are financially dependent on their partners and the extent of this dependency. This paper sets out to do this for a generation of women leaving school and entering the labour market in the mid-1970s.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, women’s work, gender equality, employment.

Carol Ekinsmyth, John Bynner, Scott Montgomery and Peter Shepherd outline the possibilities that an integrated framework for longitudinal design and alnsysis will provide for the research community, now that the 1970 birth cohort (BCS70) is permanently housed at the same research establishment as the 1958 cohort (NCDS).

For instance, this enables the collection of similar data for each study and allows the sharing of methodology and new theory and measurement techniques. It is also possible to investigate whether hypotheses supported by one study are supported by the next. The large size and national representativeness of each cohort also enables regional variation to be assessed. In addition, the existence of studies in other countries of comparable age cohorts, such as the US National Longitudinal Study of Youth, extends the scope of comparative analysis by further adding an international dimension.

The working Paper contains sections summmarising for both birth cohorts the data collection; data preparation and availability; published material and funded research projects.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, BCS70, 1970 birth cohort, survey design, fieldwork methodology, integration.

Heather Joshi and Andrew Hinde use both 1946 cohort data (2 generations of NSHD) and supplementary information from mothers of the 1958 cohort (NCDS) to describe and explain the post-war trend of mothers returning to the labour-market after diminishing breaks around childbearing.  Class and regional differences diminish over time, both in simple two-way analyses and in multiple (hazard) regression. Women’s education and occupational attainments retain a positive effect on their chances of entering employment over the two generations. The weakening of class differentials is taken to signal a reduction in the income effect of a shifting labour-supply function. Evidence on continuing job downgrading provides a cautionary note on interpreting increased employment as an improvement in female status.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, childhood, young adult, childbearing, employment, maternity break, social class.

Chris Power uses the NCDS childhood sweeps and age 23 follow-up to look at the results of medical examinations and (at age 23 ) self-reported health.  The child’s family background and socio-economic circumstances were used as predictors and covariates, together with assessments of their social development and educational attainment.  This is the first comprehensive account of health findings from birth to age 23.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, childhood, young adult, health, medical examination, self-reported health, social class.