Working papers

Using data from four British birth cohorts, we investigate whether the association between being an only child and cognitive ability in childhood has changed over time. Findings show that only children have higher cognitive scores than children from larger families. However, the ‘only child advantage’ has weakened across cohorts as the composition of the only child group has become more associated with disadvantage. The results highlight diversity in only children whose characteristics are conditional on changes throughout time and society.

There is persistent evidence showing that care-leavers tend to have lower educational outcomes than their peers. However, less is known on whether this educational disadvantage transfers to the second generation. Drawing on data collected from families living in England in the nationally representative UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), the findings suggest intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantage, but that once socioeconomic inequalities are accounted for, children of care-leavers perform comparably to their peers in their educational progression to GCSE level. Findings are discussed regarding implications for policy.

Successive Governments have failed to address an issue that continues to plague the British education system: many teenagers leave secondary school without the ‘expected standard’ of a grade 4 pass in GCSE English language and maths. We use the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to find that half of pupils who fail at age 16 were behind at age 5. Future attempts to improve standards in English and maths will likely only succeed if high quality support is provided during the pre-school and early years.

Recent years have seen an increase in linkages between cohort and administrative data. It is important to evaluate the quality of such data linkages to discern the likely reliability of research using the linked data resource. In this paper we consider a recent linkage between the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), a cohort following the lives of an initial 17,415 people born in Great Britain in a single week of 1958, and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) databases, which contain details of all admissions, accident and emergency attendances and outpatient appointments at NHS hospitals in England.

Disabled adults face substantial labour market disadvantage. There is, however, variation in employment and earnings by age and educational level. Since much disability occurs in later life, and labour market disadvantage can lead to disability as well as vice versa, we currently have limited understanding of how far disabled people’s current disadvantage represents the cumulative impact of disability. We also lack insight into how far policy changes have managed to reduce the gap for younger cohorts. These are the contributions of this paper. Using data from two British longitudinal studies we investigate economic outcomes in their mid-20s for those who were identified with a Special Education Need or disability (SEN(D)) when at secondary school in either the 1970s or 2000s.

Despite increasing interest in the circumstances and outcomes of only children and increasing family complexity, the conceptualisation of only children has received limited scholarly attention. We raise issues involved in defining and identifying only children in social survey data, reflecting on the decisions researchers need to take. Illustrating the discussion with descriptive analyses of four British large-scale birth cohorts, we show it is possible to identify groups of individuals who correspond to different definitions of only children.

An early bird push-to-web incentive experiment was conducted in the eighth follow-up of the Next Steps cohort study, which follows the lives of a nationally representative sample of around 16,000 people in England born in 1989-90. In this working paper, we investigate the impact of the early bird web-push incentive on response rates – after three weeks and by the end of fieldwork – and assess whether it had a differential impact on subgroups hence affecting the sample composition.

We study whether proximity to fast food restaurants affects childhood obesity. We use the UK Millennium Cohort Study – a nationally representative, longitudinal study – linked with highly granular geocoded food outlet data to measure the availability of fast foods around children’s homes and schools from ages 7 to 14. We find, for certain children, in particular those with maternal education below degree level and those with lower self-regulation, that living near fast food restaurants is associated with increased Body Mass Index.

Using rich and nationally representative longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study about young people, their families, and wider social contexts, the current report aims to provide an understanding of the antecedents and development of offending behaviours. The focus is on self-reported offending when cohort members were age 17, with information on influential factors drawn from throughout childhood.