Poverty And Children’s Personal and Social Relationships

The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) Research Centre, in partnership with the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), was supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to explore associations between poverty and children’s relationships, through analysis of data from Waves 1 – 5 of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The release of this data provided the opportunity to test these associations in a larger sample than in previous studies. The research aimed to address the following overarching question: What role, if any, does low income play in shaping the quality of children’s relationships with parents, peers and siblings? Accordingly, regression analyses were conducted to measure associations between poverty and relationship outcomes before and after controlling for other factors; and to examine the effects of more and less persistent poverty. Outcome measures were drawn from Wave 5 of the MCS, while measures of poverty and controls came from all five waves of the study (when children were aged nine months, three, five, seven and eleven years). The measure of poverty was based on family income below 60 per cent of the MCS median, adjusted for family size. Children were divided into three groups as follows: - Persistent experience of poverty (Poor at 4 or 5 waves). - Some experience of poverty (Poor in 1, 2 or 3 waves). - No (recorded) experience of poverty (Poor in 0 waves). The design of the research and interpretation of findings were informed by consultation with the project advisory group and NCB’s Young Research Advisors (YRAs).