The ChildLives project will investigate the trends, inequalities, and consequences of family complexity across children’s lives in Europe. Although family change has major implications for the lives of children who live in these families, surprisingly little research has investigated children’s experiences of family change across Europe. This project will study children’s experiences of family complexity across their lives, whether their experiences differ by socio-economic background and across countries, the reasons behind cross-national differences, the consequences of increasing family complexity for children’s lives across Europe, and the potential consequences of family change for children of the future. The project fills important research gaps by taking a novel, child-centred life course approach and studying the lives of European children using a range of large-scale national and cross-national longitudinal datasets and a combination of advanced longitudinal methods, machine learning, and simulation.
This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding Guarantee [grant number: EP/Y036441/1]. The project was selected for funding as an ERC Starting Grant.
