Youth in Transition: Longitudinal comparisons of youth transitions in the UK using cohort and synthetic cohort data

The doctoral project, titled: ''Youth in Transition: Longitudinal comparisons of youth transitions in the UK using cohort and synthetic cohort data''will make use of pre-existing nationally representative longitudinal datasets in order to produce multivariate statistical analysis of key identified youth transitions. The changing nature of individuals given social and economic circumstances promotes diverging youth transitions in many areas, ranging from education to employment, from housing to marriage. In comparison to previous generations, indeed even their parent's generation, young people are remaining in education longer, and thus out of the full-time employment market longer. Living away from home, as well as cohabiting with a partner before marriage are also becoming even more common. The very concept of marriage has altered-with the youth of today pushing back marriage much later than previous youth. Marriage is not the only thing that is being pushed back, the time individuals decide to have children themselves has also been pushed back. Alongside this the number of children being born is itself continuing to decline. All these examples demonstrate a common identifiable theme-key points within an individual's youth life course. These key points, or transitions will make up the bulk of this doctoral project. This research seeks to identify, understand, and finally explain these key historical changes that are identified through a detailed comparative cohort analysis. The National Child Development Study (1958) as well as the British Cohort Study (1970) offer two examples of older birth cohort studies that offer a nationally representative sample that supports the utilisation of comparative analyses. The issue however is that from the end of the British Cohort study and the commencement of the Millennium Cohort Study (2000-2) there is a large gap of 30 years that could impede a project seeking to understand such historical youth transitions within the life course. To combat this data related challenge this project aims to construct synthetic cohorts of youth data from the British Household Panel Survey (1991-2009) and Understanding Society (also known as the UK Household Longitudinal Study) (2009-). Combined, this synthetic data as well as the older birth cohorts will be used to achieve the aim of this research project. To study and understand youth transitions in a historical and life course context.