Generations and gender survey

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, facing unemployment, difficulties with housing, and economic precarity.

Through the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), we are able 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 GGS is a complex online survey collecting nationally representative data from 7000 people in the UK. It 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. This is the first time the GGS has been conducted in the UK, with the UK previously omitted from many cross-national comparisons. The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) will be administering the data collection.

Data from the UK GGS is available here

See the Generations and Gender Survey launch video here. This video provides information about the GGS, how the data can be used, and policy applications.

This research is co-ordinated by Professor Brienna Perelli-Harris.