Introduction

One of the principal motivations for the launch of the new Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) was to gather up-to-date evidence on the extent to which family background impacts on child outcomes. In this chapter we use data from the MCS to provide some new empirical evidence on the extent to which one measure of parental background, family income, is correlated with two child outcomes, cognitive vocabulary ability and behavioural outcomes. The analysis we undertake considers the magnitude of age 3 and 5 test score gaps and gaps in behavioural (or non-cognitive) outcomes by family income group. We also use these data to describe the dynamics of child achievement and behaviour between these ages. Much of the interest in early age outcomes is motivated by the link between early achievement gaps and the longer run relationship between the economic fortunes of parents and their adult children. Hence there is a natural connection between income gradients in early age child outcomes and the extent of intergenerational income mobility, and we also consider these connections.

We explore cross-cohort comparisons, comparing the MCS findings with those from earlier birth cohort studies. Using up-to-date empirical analysis assessing changes over time in the impact of family background on young children is particularly important in the light of the government's focus on improving children's outcomes since 1997. This policy agenda has gradually gathered pace since the New Labour government took office, so that the millennium cohort have experienced some, but not all, of the raft of policy initiatives in this direction. The MCS children would have experienced the beginnings of Sure Start, and free nursery provision for the neediest 3-year-olds (also discussed in Chapter 8, this volume). In addition, the rate of child poverty began to drop in 1997 (Brewer et al, 2003), which should equate to fewer disadvantages for those at the bottom. By exploring changes over cohorts born since the mid-1980s we can get a sense of the success of government policy since 1997. Our consideration of both formal tests of achievement and behaviour is also in line with the Every Child Matters policy agenda launched in 2003, which sought to make more explicit the links between all the different aspects of children's lives, including achievement, enjoyment and ‘making a positive contribution’.