MILLENNIUM COHORT STUDY

A consortium headed by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies carried out the first two surveys of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and a consortium of Government Departments.

The survey for the first sweep took place between June 2001 and January 2003, gathering information from the parents of 18,818 babies born in the UK over a 12-month period and living in selected UK wards at age 9 months.

The second sweep took place between September 2003 and April 2005 with the children at around 3 years of age.

The third sweep took place between early 2006 and early 2007, when the children were starting primary school.

The fourth sweep finished in December 2008. The children were 7 years old.

The fifth sweep will take place in 2012.

Three sub-studies have also been undertaken, with two reports produced so far: the Health Visitor Survey Report, and the Fertility Survey Report.

Rationale for the study

Understanding the social conditions surrounding birth and early childhood is increasingly appreciated as fundamental to the study of the whole of the life course. This applies across the range, from the origins of social exclusion through investigation of the influence of early circumstances on health over the life course to providing evidence for major policy initiatives such as "Sure Start". The initiation of the MCS presents an exceptional research opportunity to study the all-important first year of life and potentially resolve many of the issues about its long-term impact. These include issues of central policy interest such as the foundations of social capital and cohesion.

Major questions about the prospects for children born in 2000-1 concern poverty and wealth, the quality of family life and its support by public policy and the broader community. The health and well being of parents and infants will be located in the context of the rich socio-economic data to be collected in the study. Issues to emerge for future sweeps of the cohort will include: advantage and disadvantage in education, health, employment and the parenting of the next generation. Besides changing family forms, there are social and economic changes in the labour market, technology, social polarization, gender roles, and the ideology of individualism. These will make the unfolding lives of the new cohort different from those of their predecessors. Will such changes also be reflected in variation in behaviour, attitudes and expectations among parents? Which of the intricate links between the social and biological aspects of human development can be illuminated?

The Sample

The sample population for the study was drawn from all live births in the UK over 12 months from 1 September 2000 in England & Wales and 1 December 2000 in Scotland & Northern Ireland.  

The sample was selected from a random sample of electoral wards, disproportionately stratified to ensure adequate representation of all four UK countries, deprived areas and areas with high concentrations of Black and Asian families.

The sample design of the MCS differs from that of its predecessors (NCDS & BCS70) in that it took a whole year's births, and covers the whole of the United Kingdom for the first time.  The sample was drawn slightly later in Scotland and Northern Ireland so as not to coincide with other surveys being carried out on families with babies in these areas at the same time.

 Notes

* including 49 groupings of two or three small wards
** provisional totals, all productive contacts
*** partners of main respondent in two parent families