Abstract/Summary

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.