Growing gap in children’s socio-emotional skills

The gap between children with the highest and lowest socio-emotional skills has increased over the past three decades, and the socio-economic status of mothers is a significant contributing factor, according to a new UCL study. The study, published in the Journal of Public Economics , compares the socio-emotional skills of two cohorts of children born in England 30 years apart, and shows for the first time that inequality in these early skills has increased. Researchers from UCL Economics analysed data from 9,545 people born in 1970 from the British Cohort Study (BCS) and 5,572 people born in 2000-2002 from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The data was collected at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, part of UCL Institute of Education. Associate Professor Gabriella Conti (UCL Economics, UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies and IFS), corresponding author on the study said: "We found that inequality in socio-emotional skills at five years of age was lower among children born in the 1970s than among those born in the 2000s. For example, the difference between children of more and less educated mothers, or of mothers who smoked during pregnancy and those who didn't, was greater among those born in the 2000s compared to those born in the 1970s." The researchers also show that these socio-emotional skills measured at age five, an earlier age than in most of the existing literature, are significant predictors of unhealthy behaviours later in life, such as smoking or having a higher BMI.