About the data
The Youth Panel was added to the British Household Panel Survey in 1994, interviewing all children between the ages of 11 and 15 in panel members' households. It is a yearly survey that carries many of the same items year on year. When youth reach the age of 16, they transition into the adult survey. These data are unique in that they provide year-on-year observations of British children.
How the data were used
This project investigated the effects of changes in family formations on the well-being of children in those families. Is it just changes in family formation that affect their well-being? Or is it possible that stable family forms can also have detrimental effects on children?
By linking data from the Youth Panel of the British Household Panel Survey with parental information from the main survey, it was possible to follow children who experienced various family formation changes across the panel.
The study examined the effects of many kinds of family formations - moving into step-parent arrangements or single parent families, and being in a stepfamily for several years or being raised by a single father. In particular, the work looked at how happy Youth Panel members reported being with their lives overall, their household income (quintile) and their self-esteem - all questions asked in each year of the panel.
The project used both a pooled cross-sectional analysis (where all the waves are appended to each other with a control variable for year) and a fixed effects analysis (which allows for controlling for unobserved behaviours in a sort of quasi-experimental manner) in order to contrast the results.
About the author
Karen Robson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at York University, Toronto.
To view and download the data GO TO ESDS