Linking our Lives

In Episode 7 of Linking our Lives, we're talking to Professor Patrick Sturgis from the London School of Economics and Professor Franz Buscha from the University of Westminster. Together they have been researaching social mobility for some 15 years to try to get to grips with what we really know. In this episode they discuss how and why they have used the ONS Longitudinal Study in that work, what they have learned and what policymakers seeking to tackle inequality need to consider. 

Some further reading

• Spatial and social mobility in England and Wales: a sub-national analysis of differences and trends over time

• Declining social mobility? Evidence from five linked censuses in England and Wales 1971–2011

• Selective Schooling Has Not Promoted Social Mobility in England

• Declining Social Mobility? Evidence from five linked Censuses in England and Wales 1971-2011

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In Episode 6 of Linking our Lives, we're talking to Dafni Papoutsaki from the University of Brighton about research using the ONS Longitudinal Study and other secondarty data to look at who moves avay from where they grow up to try to improve their prospects and the implications of that. 

Further reading

• Moving out to move on, migration, disadvantage and social mobility Social Mobility Commission, July 2020

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In Episode 5 of Series  1 of the Linking our Lives podcast, David Green, Professor of Historical Geography at Kings College London, Nicola Shelton, Professor of Population Health at University College London and social history enthusiast and volunteer Becky Darnill discuss the research project Addressing Health: Morbidity, Mortality and Occupational Health in the Victorian and Edwardian Post Office - a fantastic collaboration exploring the timing and geography of ill health, and the responses of the Post Office and the workforce! 

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In Episode 4 of the Linking our Lives Podcast, Professor Amanda Sacker from UCL is in conversation with the UK National Statistician Sir Ian Diamond about her high profile research using the ONS Longitudinal Study and funded by the Nuffield Foundation to look at the outcomes of care experienced people. 

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In Episode 3 of Series 1 of Linking our Lives, Aly Sizer from the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information and User Support (CeLSIUS) at UCL talks about her research on The Up-Series generation in the ONS Longitudinal Study. She explains the inspiration behind her research using the ONS Longitudinal Study  to see if the children selected for the well-known and popular Up series of television documentaries were representative of the wider population and reveals what she found and what it tells us.  

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In Episode 2 of Series 1 of Linking our Lives: England and Wales since 1971, we are marking 50 years of the ONS Longitudinal Study by asking how it has become such a gold mine of information about how our society has changedover time. We are in conversation with Rich Pereira, Director of Ageing and Demography at the Office for National Statistics who explains why, when it comes to data sources, the LS is regarded as ONS' jewel in the crown.

• Find out more about the ONS Longitudinal Study
• Get support from CeLSIUS to use the ONS LS in your research
• Find out how others have used the data in their research

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In the first episode of the Linking our Lives podcast, Nicola Shelton and Oliver Duke-Williams discuss the way in which the Government went about identifying places to support through its Stronger Towns Fund launched in 2019.

Further reading:

• CeLSIUS Policy brief: Stronger Towns  

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