title: Essays on child development in the UK
Creators: name: Saun, Richa
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2025

description: This thesis presents three essays, which address the child development from early
age to youth in the UK. The first essay addresses the diverging and converging
impact of bilingual household environment on the child’s vocabulary and behavioural
development across ages 3 to 7 years compared to the monolingual counterparts. The
second essay considers the importance of parental mobility descisions taken at age 5
on the vocabulary and behavioural development scores across ages 7 to 14 years and
highlights the impact of moving to more or less deprived area of current residence
on the child outcomes in terms of change in the vocabulary and behavioural scores.
The final essay explains the impact of ’COVID’ shock on the youth preferences to
continue education. To capture the impact of parental and household inputs on the
youth’s likelihood to continue education, the final essay utilises the change in parental
work status and socioeconomic condition during the pandemic.
The Impact of Individual Parental Bilingualism on Children’s Vocabulary and
Behavioural Development in the UK
The current chapter examines the impact of individual parental bilingualism on
children’s vocabulary and behavioural development in the UK. It uses the Millennium
Cohort Study (MCS) for children aged 3 to 7 years to look at the age-specific
and cumulative effects of individual parental bilingualism. The study finds that the
bilingual child fares worse in vocabulary development at age 3 but catches up with
their monolingual counterparts by age 7. Mother being bilingual has a significant
negative impact on the vocabulary scores for children aged 3 to 5 years. There is a
significant negative impact of bilingual father on a child’s behavioural development at
age 5. The negative impact on behavioural outcomes continues till age 7, in case of
mother bilingual. As a cumulative process, mother-only bilingual declines vocabulary
development and father-only bilingual have a significant adverse effect on a child’s
behavioural development compared to their English-only counterparts.
The Impact of Parental Residential Mobility Decisions on Child Development
This chapter examines the age-specific impact of changing residence on a child’s
vocabulary and behavioural development. It uses the MCS dataset for children aged
3 to 14 years in England. The study aims to analyse the impact of parental decisions
to change residence captured by the changes in the movement between Indexes of
Multiple Deprivation (IMD). IMD deciles are used to account for the changes in child
development for the families moving to higher or lower IMD. The child development
at each age group is captured as the change between the test scores obtained at ages 3
and over. The current study uses household movements with combined and individual
deciles of the IMDs. The overall age-specific analysis shows that there lies a significant
negative impact of the changing residence at age 5 on the vocabulary outcome. In case
of internalsing scores, the movements along the deciles of the overall IMD movements,
show a positive impact on the internalising scores as one moves down the lower decile
of the IMD. The positive impact on internalising scores highlights an increase in the
behavioural issues. Among the movements along the deciles of the individual IMDs,
households moving to higher or lower decile of the health IMD show a significant
change in vocabulary and behavioural scores.
The Impact of COVID on the youth’s preferences to continue education
This study investigates the interrelationship between parental employment and
socioeconomic dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent
educational aspirations of the youth. Using the pre-COVID and COVID UK MCS
data, the study finds approximately 4 percentage point increase in the likelihood
of youth preferring to pursue education when fathers transition to unemployment,
contrasted with those with employed fathers. Conversely, when mothers transition
to unemployment during the pandemic, there was a significant 3 percentage point
decrease in the propensity of youth towards further education. These trends prevail
across "single and two-parent households" for mother and father and for father only
in case of "two-parent only households" analysis. Notably, there was an overall
positive inclination to continue education in the case that fathers transitioned jobs for
both household types, and a negative inclination in the case of mothers compared to
parents remain in unemployment. Specific economic shifts within the family, such
as a notable financial improvement for mothers/fathers, decreases/increases positive
inclination, and a minor financial decline for mothers/fathers increases/decreases the
positive inclination. Hence, this research offers valuable insights into how household
economic transitions during global crises can shape youth educational ambitions.