DOI: 10.3886/icpsr31622.v3
title: The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), Public Use, United States, 1998-2024
title: Version 3

description: The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS, formerly known as the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study) follows a cohort of nearly 5,000 children born in large, U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. The study oversampled births to unmarried couples; and, when weighted, the data are representative of births in large U.S. cities at the turn of the century. The FFCWS was originally designed to address four questions of great interest to researchers and policy makers:

What are the conditions and capabilities of unmarried parents, especially fathers?
What is the nature of the relationships between unmarried parents?
How do children born into these families fare?
How do policies and environmental conditions affect families and children?
The FFCWS consists of interviews with mothers, fathers, and/or primary caregivers at birth and again when children are ages 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, and 22. The parent interviews collected information on attitudes, relationships, parenting behavior, demographic characteristics, health (mental and physical), economic and employment status, neighborhood characteristics, and program participation. Beginning at age 9, children were interviewed directly (either during the home visit or on the telephone). The direct child interviews collected data on family relationships, home routines, schools, peers, and physical and mental health, as well as health behaviors.
A collaborative study of the FFCWS, the In-Home Longitudinal Study of Pre-School Aged Children (In-Home Study) collected data from a subset of the FFCWS Core respondents at the Year 3 and 5 follow-ups to ask how parental resources in the form of parental presence or absence, time, and money influence children under the age of 5. The In-Home Study collected information on a variety of domains of the child's environment, including: the physical environment (quality of housing, nutrition and food security, health care, adequacy of clothing and supervision) and parenting (parental discipline, parental attachment, and cognitive stimulation). In addition, the In-Home Study also collected information on several important child outcomes, including anthropometrics, child behaviors, and cognitive ability. This information was collected through interviews with the child's primary caregiver, and direct observation of the child's home environment and the child's interactions with his or her caregiver.
Similar activities were conducted during the Year 9 follow-up. At the Year 15 follow-up, a condensed set of home visit activities were conducted with a subsample of approximately 1,000 teens. Teens who participated in the In-Home Study were also invited to participate in a Sleep Study and were asked to wear an accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist for seven consecutive days to track their sleep (Sleep Actigraphy Data) and that day's behaviors and mood (Daily Sleep Actigraphy and Diary Survey Data).
An additional collaborative study collected data from the child care provider (Year 3) and teacher (Years 9 and 15) through mail-based surveys. Saliva samples were collected at Year 9 and 15 (Biomarker file and Polygenic Scores). The Study of Adolescent Neural Development (SAND) COVID Study began data collection in May 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It included online surveys with the young adult and their primary caregiver.
The FFCWS began its seventh wave of data collection in October 2020, around the focal child's 22nd birthday. Data collection and interviews continued through January 2024. The Year 22 wave included a young adult (YA) survey with the original focal child and a primary caregiver (PCG) survey. Data were also collected on the children of the original focal child (referred to as Generation 3, or G3).
Documentation for these files is available on the FFCWS website located here. For details of updates made to the FFCWS data files, please see the project's Data Alerts page.
Data collection for the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421, as well as a consortium of private foundations.
description: The FFCWS was originally designed to address four questions of great interest to researchers and policy makers:

What are the conditions and capabilities of unmarried parents, especially fathers?
What is the nature of the relationships between unmarried parents?
How do children born into these families fare?
How do policies and environmental conditions affect families and children?
description: Detailed information about the baseline (birth) data collection can be found here.
Participants were recontacted for follow-up interviews at child's age 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, and 22. "Year" refers to the age of the child.
Year 1 (Wave 2): Data collection took place from 1999 to 2001. All respondents who completed a baseline interview were contacted for the Year 1 follow-up, as well as fathers whose partner had completed a baseline interview but did not complete one themselves. Interviews were conducted via computer-assisted telephone instrument (CATI). In cases where respondents were unable to be contacted by phone, in-person visits were conducted.
Year 3 (Wave 3): Data collection took place between 2001 and 2003. Core Study mother and father surveys followed the same design as Year 1. Primary caregivers (the person who had custody of the focal child for half or more of the time) who were invited and consented to participate in the In-Home Study completed questionnaires by phone. In-home observations and a workbook of activities for anthropometric and cognitive measures of the primary caregiver and child were completed within the family's home. If the parent had some type of non-parental child care arrangement(s) at the time of study, the provider with whom the child spent the most time was interviewed and observed as part of the Child Care Study.
Year 5 (Wave 4): Data collection took place between 2003 to 2006. Core Study mother and father surveys followed the same design as previous waves. The In-Home study followed the same design as Year 3. Families who completed the In-Home Study and had children that were currently enrolled in kindergarten, had been enrolled the previous year, or were going to be enrolled the following year were eligible for the Kindergarten Study (Teacher Survey). School districts were first asked for permission to participate in the study, followed by the kindergarten teachers themselves for survey consent.
Year 9 (Wave 5): Data collection took place between 2007 and 2010. Core Study survey design followed that of previous waves. The In-Home Study added a 20-minute interview with the focal child using computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) technology. The primary caregiver survey was conducted as a self-administered questionnaire. Saliva samples were also collected from biological mothers and children. For the Teacher Survey, the child's teacher of the previous or current year of schooling (depending upon the date of In-Home Study completion) was contacted by mail and asked to complete a paper questionnaire.
Year 15 (Wave 6): Data collection took place between 2014 and 2017. Eligibility for the Year 15 study was expanded to the entire baseline sample of families. For the Core Survey, only the primary caregiver and the teen were interviewed. Primary caregiver and teen surveys were administered using either CAPI or Qualtrics, the latter option used for those who did not participate in the Year 9 survey. In-Home Study components followed the design of previous years, including saliva sample collection.
Year 22 (Wave 7): Data collection took place between 2020 and 2024. Only the young adult and primary caregiver from Year 15 completed the Year 22 survey. If the primary caregiver could not be contacted, another biological parent or past caregiver of the young adult were eligible. The primary caregiver and young adult surveys were completed by self-administered online platform (Blaise or Qualtrics), an interviewer-administered phone survey, or an interviewer-administered in-person survey. The young adult survey also contained items collected about their children, also known as the Generation 3 (G3) children (n=740). Any young adult who completed the Year 22 survey was also invited to provide a saliva sample via mail.
Sleep study: During Year 15, a randomly selected sub-sample of individuals participating in home visits were asked to wear an accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist for 7 consecutive days to track their sleep. Additionally, participants completed a daily sleep diary via Qualtrics detailing the previous night's sleep and the day's behaviors and mood.
COVID-19 study: Data collection occurred between May 2020 and September 2021. Online Qualtrics surveys were completed by young adults and their primary caregivers from a subsample of families representing 7 original sample cities.
description: Major topics and subtopics covered in the Core Survey:

Attitudes and expectations
Childcare services and availability
Cognitive and behavioral development (added in Year 1)
Demographics: age, citizenship, race, ethnicity, sex
Education and school, including school/teacher characteristics and student experiences
Employment
Family and social ties: social support, religion, family background, community participation
Finances: child support, earnings, expenses, financial assets, household income, social services, material hardship
Health and health behavior: fertility history, health care access and insurance, height and weight, mental health, physical health, substance use and abuse, sexual health, accidents/injuries, medication, disabilities/conditions
Housing and neighborhood: child and parent living arrangements, home environment, household composition, housing status, residential mobility, neighborhood conditions/safety
Legal system: criminal justice system involvement, custody, paternity, police contact
Parenting: parent-child contact, abilities, behavior, contact with child welfare services
Romantic relationships: quality and status


The Year 22 data and COVID-19 study covered items specific to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the pandemic's impact on work/employment, social activities, social support, finances, wellbeing, home life, mental health, physical health, and funding.
Detailed information about the scales used in the study can be found here.
description: "National" weights make data
representative of births occurring in large U.S. cities
(the 77 U.S. cities with populations over 200,000 in 1994) between 1998 and
2000. It is applicable to 16
randomly selected cities
(73% of data at baseline). "City" weights make data representative
of births occurring in the 20 U.S. cities
sampled between 1998 and 2000. It is applicable to: All 20 cities (100% of data at baseline). For more information, please visit the documentation here.
description: Response Rates: 
Year 1: 89% of mothers and 88% of fathers from the original baseline sample were interviewed by phone.
Year 3: 86% of mothers and 67% of fathers from the original baseline sample were interviewed by phone. Of 4,248 families contacted for the In-Home Study, 4,140 were eligible and 3,288 completed (79%).
Year 5: 4,139 mothers (roughly 85% of baseline) and 3,159 fathers completed an interview. Out of 3,700 attempted eligible Core participants, 3,001 completed at least a component of the In-Home Study (81%).
Year 9: 3,515 mothers (76% from eligible, 72% among baseline) and 2,652 fathers (59% from eligible, 54% among baseline) completed surveys. 3,391 in-home observations were conducted (72% from eligible).
Year 15: 3,580 primary caregivers (73% among baseline cases) and 3,444 children/teens (70% among baseline) completed surveys. 1,090 in-home assessments were completed (71% among eligible, 22% among baseline families).
Year 22: 2,744 primary caregivers (60% from eligible, 56% among baseline) and 2,990 young adults (61% among baseline) completed surveys.
Sleep study (Year 15): 1,090 families were selected for participation; 932 provided at least one day's worth of valid data.
description: This national study uses a stratified, multistage sample of 4898 children born in large U.S. cities (population over 200,000) between 1998 and 2000, where births to unmarried mothers were oversampled by a ratio of 3 to 1. For detailed information, please refer to this documentation.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: All Years Data, 1998-2024
DS2: Baseline Data, 1998-2000
DS3: Year 1 Data, 1999-2001
DS4: Year 3 Data, 2001-2003
DS5: Year 5 Data, 2003-2006
DS6: Year 9 Data, 2007-2010
DS7: Polygenic Scores (PGS) Data, Year 9
DS8: Biomarker Data, Years 9 and 15
DS9: Year 15 Data, 2014-2017
DS10: Sleep Actigraphy Data, Year 15
DS11: Daily Sleep Actigraphy and Diary Survey Data, Year 15
DS12: Year 22 Data, 2020-2024
DS13: Year 22 Generation 3 Child-Level Data, 2020-2024
DS14: Study of Adolescent Neural Development (SAND) COVID-19 Survey Data, Year 22
description: Children born in large U.S. cities (population over 200,000) between 1998 and 2000, their mothers, fathers, and primary caregivers.
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI); coded on-site observation; cognitive assessment test; face-to-face interview; mail questionnaire; mixed mode; telephone interview; web-based surveyAdditional publications using the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) data can be found on the FFCWS Publications Archive webpage.The data previously available through ICPSR were structured by study: Core Mother, Core Father, In-Home Activities Workbook, Toddler Q-Sort, and Child Care Study with Teacher Survey. In the current release, these datasets have been incorporated into their respective year/wave. For a list of current data/documentation by wave, please see the FFCWS public data documentation webpage.The family ID variable <strong>IDNUM</strong> can be used to merge all datasets in this collection. Please refer to the User Guides for more information on file merging.Due to processing and size limitations, an ICPSR codebook for the All Years Data (DS1) could not be produced, and variables for DS1 could not be added to the Social Science Variables Database (SSVD). An ICPSR Processing Notes document has been added containing information pertinent to the DS1 variables. To review frequencies and summary statistics, please refer to each individual wave's ICPSR codebook and SSVD entries.Due to changes in ICPSR's processes during this study's curation, the ICPSR codebook for the Year 22 data (DS12) is in EPUB format. All other ICPSR codebooks are in PDF format.