Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The main British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is conducted by the ESRC UK Longitudinal Studies Centre (ULSC), together with the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex. In addition to conducting the BHPS and disseminating it to the research community, ISER undertakes a programme of research based on panel data, using the BHPS and other national panels to monitor and measure social change. The main objective of the BHPS is to further understanding of social and economic change at the individual and household level in the UK, and to identify, model and forecast such changes and their causes and consequences in relation to a range of socio-economic variables. It is conducted as a longitudinal study, where each adult member (aged 16 years and over) of a sampled household is interviewed annually. If individuals leave their original household, all adult members of their new households are interviewed. Children are also interviewed. For full details of the BHPS methodology, sampling, changes over time, and a complete set of documentation, see the main BHPS study, held at the UK Data Archive under SN 5151. Understanding Society: From Wave 19, the BHPS has been subsumed into a new longitudinal study called Understanding Society, or the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), conducted by ISER. The BHPS Wave 19 formed part of Understanding Society Wave 2 (January 2010 - March 2011). The BHPS fieldwork period therefore moved from September-April to January-March. This means that the gap between interviews 18 and 19 for the BHPS sample ranges between 16 and 30 months rather than the standard 12 months. From Wave 2, the BHPS sample has been a permanent part of the larger study and interviews are conducted annually again. BHPS sample members have an identifier within the Understanding Society datasets, allowing BHPS users to match BHPS Wave 1-18 data to...