Skip to content

Publication

Family instability throughout childhood: new estimates from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society

Publication type

Conference Paper

Series

Understanding Society Scientific Conference 2015, 21-23 July 2015, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Authors

Publication date

July 23, 2015

Summary

Estimates of the stock of children in different family types exist, but these necessarily understate the proportion of children that will ever spend time living in particular family types during childhood. Such estimates also tell us nothing about instability in family circumstances, something which has been shown to be harmful for children but shown in the US to be distributed in a way which reinforces patterns of inter-generational transmission of disadvantage. Using Understanding Society we document the extent of, and the inequalities in, the experience of different family situations for children born in the UK in the 1980s through to early 2000s. We show that children born to younger mothers spent considerably more of childhood, on average, living without one of their birth parents, and experienced more instability in family circumstances, than children born to older mothers. We also show how these estimates are affected by the assumptions made about the nature of sample attrition.

Subjects

Link

Cid:523154

Email newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter