Growing Up in Social Housing in the New Millennium: Housing, Neighbourhoods, and Early Outcomes for Children Born in 2000

Rebecca Tunstall, Ruth Lupton, Dylan Kneale and Andrew Jenkins

Published February 2011

This study draws on the Millennium Cohort Study to explore the housing and neighbourhood circumstances of children born in England in 2000 at the age of 5 in 2006. The majority of children experienced good housing conditions. Those in social rented homes, and to a lesser extent in private rented homes too, were markedly disadvantaged in terms of family circumstances and neighbourhood deprivation, while housing conditions and other neighbourhood characteristics also varied somewhat between tenures. Links were found between children’s housing tenure and test scores. These were largely explained by a combination of family characteristics and neighbourhood deprivation.