The UK Generations and Gender Survey launched

The University of Southampton, in collaboration with the National Centre for Social Research, have launched the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). This ESRC-funded project is led by Centre for Population Change members Professor Brienna Perelli-Harris, Professor Ann Berrington, and Dr Olga Maslovskaya, as part of an international collaboration with the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP).

The GGS aims to better understand how young and mid-life adults in the UK are transitioning to adulthood, forming partnerships and families, and coping with recent economic, social, and political uncertainty. The survey is collecting nationally representative data from 7000 people in the UK using a complex online survey. This is the first time the GGS has been conducted in the UK, with the UK previously omitted from many cross-national comparisons.

The GGS is one of the main outputs of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), an international Research Infrastructure supported by the European Commission. Over the past 20 years, the GGP has collected survey data in 25 countries in Europe and beyond. The GGP’s recent round of surveys, called GGS2020, seeks to understand how families have been changing over the past two decades. The UK GGS data collection will be a unique resource for understanding how people are coping with the fall-out from the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

Professor Perelli-Harris comments: “Family life in the UK has been rapidly changing over the past decades. At the same time, economic and political uncertainty has increased, impacting employment stability and social mobility. The cost of living crisis has placed an unprecedented strain on families by limiting economic resources, reorganising how families care for their children, and disrupting activities outside the home. Young adults have been particularly hard hit, with a higher percentage facing unemployment, difficulties with housing, and economic precarity. These new conditions raise questions about how young and middle-aged adults are forming families, maintaining partnerships, and making decisions about childbearing.”

She continues: “The UK GGS will fill a gap in internationally comparable information about early adulthood and mid-life (ages 18-59), which will complement and supplement existing UK data sources. Current data sources do not capture the complexity of family events. They miss those born throughout the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s who have been experiencing the most intense employment and family changes, or underrepresent lone mothers, separated, and blended families. The UK therefore lacks a comprehensive source of data to examine families in the new millennium; our new project will address these shortfalls and enable us to examine emerging social challenges.”

Visit our Generations and Gender Survey pages for more information and updates on the project.

Posted 25/10/2022 07:58