Inequality is transmitted across generations, with the children of rich parents doing better than those from poorer households. But why is this? One factor that can exacerbate it is the level of sorting in society. If wealthy and educated people form households with other wealthy, educated people, they can transmit a double dose of advantage to their children. Some of this advantage could even be genetic - for example, height is influenced by genes, and tall people do well in the labour market.

We'll look at how people "assort" with others, including whether people are genetically similar to their partners. This will help us understand how inequality works in the UK - and how the process may change over time, as marriage and labour market institutions alter.

Dopamine is a chemical in the brain involved in reward, pleasure, addiction, and memory. Recent evidence has linked it to memory performance, and even affecting memory decline in dementia patients. We will look to see if genetic differences that affect dopamine activity affect memory performance over time (i.e. does having higher levels of dopamine slow memory decline over age) and dementia progression.

If one takes children who at an early age had similar scores on tests of their cognitive ability, one still finds significant differences in their later life educational attainment. How far are these differences related to their social origins? This is the overarching research question that we address – in more detail than in previous work and with reference to the twenty-first as well as to the twentieth century. To do so, we will use data relating to cohorts of children born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and the early 1990s. These data contain detailed information on the results of individuals’ performance on tests of cognitive ability at around age 10, on their parents’ social class, status and education – i.e. on their families’ economic, socio-cultural and specifically educational resources – and also on their own educational careers through into adult life and on the qualifications, academic and vocational, that they have obtained. On this basis, we will be able to give an answer to the question posed above: that is, by comparing, for each cohort, the subsequent educational attainment of children who at around age 10 were of similar ability and by ascertaining how far differences in their attainment are associated with their social origins. This question is of major academic interest in the field of social mobility. But it is also highly relevant to a range of current policy issues relating to the most effective means of offsetting the effects of disadvantaged social origins on individuals’ educational and subsequent socioeconomic attainment.

The burden of atopic diseases is quickly rising.[1] The focus in most published research is on medical outcomes, rather than a holistic approach, focusing on the wider impact of atopy on social outcomes.

Data are conflicting regarding atopic diseases and educational attainment. No study has assessed the effect of the three major atopic diseases simultaneously. Although these diseases frequently co-occur, understanding the most predictive phenotypes is important to tailoring interventions. Previous studies have demonstrated that children with rhinitis were 40% more likely to drop a grade between winter and final GCSE examinations, and 70% more likely to drop a grade if they were taking sedating antihistamines during examinations.[3] There are no studies of the effect of childhood eczema on educational attainment. There are contrasting study findings in asthma, with some studies of asthma reporting no effect, adverse effects, and some describing a benefit in terms of exam results. A recent study reported that social adversity and ethnicity was associated with poor exam performance, while asthma was associated with 1.1% increase in exam scores.[4]
Multiple factors may lead to worsened educational attainment. These include absenteeism from school due to ill health. Atopic diseases can also lead to “presenteeism” and poor concentration at school. Depression and anxiety, sleeplessness and ADHD have been associated with eczema and may lead to impaired educational attainment. Medication use including antihistamines and oral corticosteroid use could impact educational outcomes and thus hinder later occupational attainment.

Existing birth cohort data have the potential to answer many critical questions in relation to educational and occupational attainment. We will utilize ALSPAC data to test the hypothesis that atopic diseases are associated with worse education and occupational attainment.

The World Health Organisation has defined the current era as one of epidemiological transition, where chronic medical issues are overtaking acute and even infectious disease as one of the most significant challenges facing health care providers internationally. Healthcare providers are struggling to provide the necessary medical resources needed to treat the growing population of people living with long-term health issues over a prolonged period of time – for example, in 2012, the Department of Health estimated that 70% of the annual healthcare in England spend could be attributed to those living with long-term conditions, and estimated that this figure would only rise in the coming decades. Highly implicit in these costs are the mental health issues which are disproportionately prevalent among this population. Co-morbid mental illness in the context of chronic physical illness has been established to lead to poorer physical health outcomes, decreased quality of life and increased healthcare expenditure. Therefore, interventions to reduce the burden of chronic illness in recent years have become increasingly focused on improving the well-being of people living with long-term medical issues.

Children and adolescents have been noticeably absent in the larger discourse on chronic illness and its related consequences. However, such an exclusion is severely curtailing our understanding of the course of chronic illness, especially when it comes to understanding the development of mental health issues among this population. In the general population, epidemiologists have been unable to establish whether it is chronic illness that causes the individual to become mentally distressed, or whether it is mental health issues, although they may not be diagnosed, that give rise to a number of behaviours which puts the individual at an increased risk for developing chronic illness. However, lifestyle factors cannot modify the development of chronic health conditions in younger populations, meaning that a disproportionate occurrence of mental health conditions would indicate some factor, specifically relating to living with chronic illness, that mediates the occurrence of mental health issues in this age group. Therefore, a specific focus on younger age groups could provide unique insight into critical factors mediating the relationship between chronic illness and mental health, in order to guide the provision of effective interventions both to this age group, and people living with long-term illness more generally. However, there are such significant limitations to the quality of the existing research focusing on mental health issues in chronically ill youths, that it cannot even be established that a disproportionate level of mental health issues truly exists among this population. This research project aims to address the limitations in previous research, in order to more thoroughly investigate the relationship between living with a chronic illness in childhood and adolescence and consequent psychological adjustment.

The body mass index (BMI) has long been used in population studies in order to quantify obesity
and is known to predict cardiovascular events. Especially in childhood BMI the influence of family environment has attracted considerable interest. Thus previous research has shown that maternal BMI is an excellent predictor for the BMI of the offspring. However, it is unclear to what extent maternal genetic factors contribute to the offspring’s BMI beyond genetic transmission. This effect is also called cultural transmission (CT) and can be defined as the transmission of environmental factors from the parent to the offspring generation. CT can be divided into two components. Environmental influence caused by parental genetic factors
and components transmitted exclusively via the environment. Thus the aim of this proposal is to
partition CT into genetic and environmental aspects to further elucidate the maternal influence
on BMI.

This project extends research collaborations with COPSAC within the UK10K project. The project will generate a summary of genetic relationships between genetic variants, which will help to improve the power of gene-set enrichment analyses. The summary of genetic relationships will be available to ALSPAC users and shared with COPSAC.

Refractive error (e.g. myopia) is an important public health concern worldwide, as the most common cause of impaired vision. There is increasing interest in the affect of social position on visual health, considering the whole range of severity including those with mild impairment. ALSPAC is included in our programme of work within CLOSER (Cohort & Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resource) which is investigating visual function and refractive error, making comparisons both within and across UK-based cohort and longitudinal studies. We will apply life course epidemiological approaches to investigate biological, environmental and lifestyle factors influencing the development of refractive error and the biological and social factors that influence visual health. We will also investigate the health and social outcomes associated with impaired visual health and with refractive error. Using several studies, which started recruitment at different times, we will assess any changes over time in both risk factors and outcomes which may help to identify modifiable risk factors.

Education is one strategy to reduce cycle-related accidents, and many countries have training courses for children. In the UK, the National Cycle Proficiency Scheme (NCPS) was first introduced in 1947. A typical course takes place during the final years of primary school and 40% of children participate by their twelfth birthday. Despite the significant resources invested in child cycle training both in the UK and elsewhere, there has been little scientific evaluation of their outcomes.