Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)

Aims
The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a national longitudinal birth cohort study following the lives of around 19,000 young people born in the United Kingdom in 2000-01. This multidisciplinary survey aims to capture the influence of early family context on child development and outcomes. Children from minority ethnic backgrounds and children in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland are oversampled to help capture the diversity of backgrounds into which children are born in the beginning of the 21st century.

Institution
Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) - Institute of Education (IoE), UCL

Geographic coverage - Nations
England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

Geographic coverage - Regions
Nationwide

Start date
2000

Catalogue record last updated
26/01/2024

Sample type
Birth cohort

Sample details
Children born between September 2000 and January 2002. 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.
An additional 692 families who were eligible for MCS1 but weren't picked up by the child benefit system were recruited at the age 3 survey.

Sample size at recruitment
18,818 children
18,552 families

Sample size at most recent sweep
10,757 cohort members, 10,625 families (2019 - MCS7)

Sex
All

Age at recruitment
Birth

Cohort year of birth
2000