Working papers

Joan Payne argues that widespread unemployment and fundamental changes in occupational structure have caused trade union membership to fall in Britain from 1979 to the mid-1980s. In response the unions have made efforts to recruit among groups which in the past they have treated as marginal.  Announcing a new recruitment drive, the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union stated,’Our new unionism will address itself to the problems of temporary and part-time workers, women, young people and ethnic eminorities.’  This paper aims to report on whether trade unionism among young people has markedly increased.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, undmeployment, job structure, trade union

Marian Annett explains that the right shift (RS) theory suggests the main determinant of handendess, as in other mammals, is chance. The chances are biased toward right-handedness in humans as a by-product of a single gene (ggi) which gives some advantage to the left hemisphere for speech development; in the absence of the gene, brainedness and handedness depend on chance alone, and chances which are independent.

Keywords: 1958 birth cohort, NCDS, National Child Development Study, young adult, left-right handedness, environment.

Ken Fogelman, John Fox and Chris Power use housing tenure as an index of socio-economic status to look at the relaionships between socio-economic differences in health at 23 and socio-economic circumstances earlier in life. By focussing separately on subjects whose circumstances changed and those whose circumstances remained stable they investigate whether health~ related mobility occurs, its magnitude and its importance to future outcomes.

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

The NCDS4 Research Team outline the methodology of the age 23 follow-up of NCDS, and provide a summary of the early research results in a variety of areas such as housing, employment, education, health, apprenticeship etc.

The methodology section involves preparation and piloting; tracing and arrangements for interviewing; interviewing and tacing by interviewers; coding, data-checking and editing; response patterns and their implications.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.