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Evidence from the First Two Surveys of the UK Millennium Cohort

Denise D. Hawkes, Heather E. Joshi and Kelly Ward

15th July 2008

Unequal Entry to Motherhood and Unequal Child Development:

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Outline of presentation

Motivation Millennium Cohort Study Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past Unequal Starts in Life, the beginning Unequal Child Development, the consequence Conclusions

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Motivation

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Millennium Cohort Study The MCS is the fourth of the UKs national cohort studies.

1946 cohort, NCDS and BCS70

The MCS is a nationally-representative sample of 18,818 babies within 18,552 families

The MCS will follow cohort members through out their lives, designed as a multi-purpose, multi-disciplinary dataset to “lay the foundation for future follow-ups of the cohort (and) develop links with other data sources

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Millennium Cohort Study – how is it unique? The cohort members were born in the UK between

September 2000 and January 2002 and were living in selected UK wards at age 9 months

The sample was drawn to over-represent those who live in areas of high child poverty, areas of high concentrations of ethnic minorities and the Celtic countries of the UK

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Data collected so farSweep Age of Cohort

Members

1 9 months

2 3 years

3 – data recently available

5 years (same as BSC70)

4 – currently in field 7 years (same as NCDS)

And more to come.....

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Table 1 Age of mothers at first and all births

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MCS descriptive statistics

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Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past

Hawkes, D. (2008) The UK Millennium Cohort Study: the circumstances of early motherhood, in Edwards, R. (ed.) Researching Families and Communities: Social and Generational Change, Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 147-163

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Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past cont.

Hawkes (2008) finds that the age at first child is associated with both antecedent and current disadvantage. woman’s education disadvantage in their own childhood

as indicated by the separation of their own parents, experienced life in care and having an unemployed father at the age of fourteen.

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Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past cont.

Certain ethnic minority groups (especially Pakistani or Bangladeshi)

Being born outside the UK is surprisingly found to be associated with later motherhood for some of this sample (though not to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis).

Finally, higher unemployment, measured locally and nationally at the time of conception, is found to be associated with earlier motherhood

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Unequal Starts in Life, the beginning Hawkes, D., Joshi, H. and Ward, K. (2004) Unequal

entry to motherhood and unequal starts in life: evidence from the first survey of the UK Millennium Cohort, Working Paper 6, CLS Cohort Studies, London

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Unequal Starts in Life, the beginning cont. Timing of motherhood is associated with:

Poverty Being employed Household Income Receipt of means tested benefits

Family Life Partner presence Employed partner

Well being Depression Life satisfaction

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Unequal Child Development, the consequence

How much does this historic and present disadvantage translate into disadvantage for the next generation?

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Child Outcome Measures

The three indicators of child development are: Bracken School Readiness British Ability Scales (BAS) Naming Vocabulary Total Difficulties Score of the Strengths and Difficulties

Instrument

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Control variables

Developmental controls: Age at assessment, female, low birth weight, multiple

birth Family Controls:

Maternal education, maternal employment, child care, ethnicity, English only spoken at home, partner, employed partner, household income, owner occupied housing, mother's depression at nine months, mother employed full time before nine months, region

Sample restricted to first births only

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Bracken

School readiness (Bracken)

Coeffient Standard ErrorMother's age at ( first) birth

20-24 0.14 0.06**25-29 0.30 0.06***30-34 0.41 0.06***35-39 0.35 0.08***

40+ 0.50 0.22**

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BAS

Naming Vocabulary (BAS )

Coeffient Standard ErrorMother's age at ( first) birth

20-24 0.06 0.0525-29 0.23 0.05***30-34 0.30 0.06***35-39 0.28 0.06***

40+ 0.24 0.15

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SDQ

Total Difficuties Score (SDQ)

Coeffient Standard ErrorMother's age at ( first) birth

20-24 -0.06 0.0625-29 -0.22 0.06***30-34 -0.22 0.06***35-39 -0.26 0.07***

40+ -0.12 0.15

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Conclusions

Age at motherhood is associated with past, current and intergenerational disadvantage

Implications for policies aimed at increasing the education and training of the 16-18 age group in terms of breaking this cycle of intergenerational disadvantage

Extension – to include age five measures and measures of parenting styles

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