Household income

One of the key determinants of the path of a child’s life is their household income.

Children from higher income households typically have better outcomes across

domains like education, health and socio-emotional development when compared to

their peers with lower household incomes (Growing Up in Ireland Study Team, 2018a,

2018b, 2018c). Household incomes determine the resources available to a family to

support, enrich, nurture and entertain their child, and capturing this information is

paramount for within-cohort, cross-cohort and longitudinal analysis. Capturing

household income allows analysis of its interaction with outcomes across all domains

and also helps to track potential improvement or worsening of a family’s income

overtime, lending itself to poverty analysis and other important issues related to

financial status. As this domain is both highly influential on the child’s development

and susceptible to change between waves, it is necessary to repeat at age 3.

The main sub-topics/measures that could be re-captured from Cohort 24 at age 9

months are (a) information about the family’s earnings and (b) information on receipt

of social welfare benefits. Both items were previously captured via administrative

data linkage for Cohort 24 at age 9 months in efforts to reduce the burden on

participants but were captured via questionnaire for Cohort 08 at age 3.

Recommendations for Cohort 24 at age 3:

•Repeat administrative data linkage for household earnings from Cohort 24 at age 9 months.

•Repeat administrative data linkage for receipt of social welfare benefits from Cohort 24 at age 9 months.

Financial well-being