Led by the University of Oxford, Young Lives is a unique longitudinal study of poverty and inequality that has been following the lives of 12,000 children across Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Peru and Vietnam since 2001.

Their mission is to deliver ground-breaking research that informs policy on how poverty, intersecting inequalities and new vulnerabilities affect the lives of disadvantaged children and young people, with the aim of improving their life outcomes.

Young Lives investigates aspects of poverty and inequality in their study countries with research organised under four core themes : Education and Skills, Employment, Health and Well-being, and Family Lives. Additionally, there are three cross-cutting themes: Gender and Intersecting Inequalities, New Vulnerabilities, and Methodologies.

Young Lives’ research over the last two decades has led to over 900 publications providing insights and analysis on the drivers and impacts of poverty and inequality for childhood, youth, and transitions to adulthood.

Active policy engagement and innovative research communications are at the heart of Young Lives’ track record of research-to-policy impact. Young Lives evidence played a fundamental role in influencing policy to reduce child marriage in Peru. On 25 November 2023, the Peruvian Government introduced new legislation to ban all marriages with minors under the age of 18, closing a previous legal loophole which allowed teenagers to be married from the age of 14 despite the legal age of marriage being 18 for both boys and girls. The new law also enables girls who were married as minors to have their marriages annulled.

Young Lives’ mixed-methods design – which combines quantitative and qualitative longitudinal inquiry with one-off sub-studies, ensures that the breadth and depth of children’s changing lives and contexts is captured in the data.

Every few years, Young Lives returns to the same sample of participants to follow up on changes in their lives and circumstances, capturing their experiences in early childhood through to early adulthood. The long running study has now conducted seven rounds of its quantitative survey with the study participants .  The qualitative stream of enquiry began following a subset of over 200 children across Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam in 2007, also involving their caregivers, peers, service providers and community members in in-depth interviews. The participants’ narrative accounts are documented and analysed, which gives rise to the unique opportunity to study how poverty and policies impact not only children’s daily lives, but also their outcomes as adolescents and young adults.

 

Graphic credit: © Young Lives 

In each set of data collection, Young Lives adapts and refines questions to better reflect the ages of young people. The methods are also adapted, depending on the topic, age, capacities and interests of the participants. For instance, a range of creative tools – such as drawing, mapping, and photography – were used when the participants were younger to guide and stimulate conversations.

Young Lives research findings are available via the website www.younglives.org.uk, and for further news and updates, follow the study on social media (X, Facebook, LinkedIn). 

Thumbnail photo credit: © Young Lives /Mulugeta Gebrekidan