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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. The Millennium Cohort Study offers large-scale information about children born into the New Century and the families who are bringing them up, for the four countries of the United Kingdom. Its second survey, with which this report is concerned, conducted in 2003-5 when the children were age 3, is the first in a planned series of follow-ups, building on the first survey, carried out during 2001-2002. The first sweep, when the child was aged 9-10 months, laid the foundations for this major new research resource on nearly 19000 children. The second sweep of the Millennium Cohort Study ( MCS2) collected information from 1,814 families in Scotland who were part of 15,590 families of children born across the UK in 2000-2.
2. During the preliminary analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study children and families, Scotland's families and children were identified as appearing to have, on average, some distinctive characteristics from other countries of the UK. This Report takes three of these seemingly distinctive differences and provides further multivariate analysis to examine whether the distinctive results are due to differences in the characteristics of MCS families in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
3. Three topics were selected for further analysis in this Report.
Children's cognitive scores
4. The Millennium Cohort Study administered two cognitive assessments, the BAS British Ability Scale for Vocabulary and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment, and one behaviour assessment to the children at age 3. Children in Scotland were found to have significantly higher average scores than those in other UK countries on the two cognitive assessments at age 3. In addition children were assessed by their mothers for the extent of their problem and difficult behaviour and on this score, children in Scotland also had lower average problem behaviour than children in the rest of the UK. The analyses of these 3 measures set out to examine whether it was the characteristics of the children or their families that explained the higher cognitive scores and fewer behavioural problems for children in Scotland.
5. The findings from the analysis showed that MCS children in Scotland have a small but significantly higher BAS vocabulary score than children in the rest of the UK at age 3 which cannot be explained by the gender of the child or the characteristics of MCS families. It must be due to other factors that differ between Scotland and the rest of the UK. These could be differences in early years education provision, in pre-school education, activities in the home or in grandparent influence. These are factors that cannot be assessed in this analysis.
6. The apparent advantages on the Bracken school readiness scale and on the problem behaviour score of children in Scotland over those in the rest of the UK was fully explained by the characteristics of MCS families, namely their parents' education, socio-economic status and family income.
7. The analysis also revealed that children in Scotland sometimes gained more ability or behaviour advantages than children in the rest of the UK, when they had parents with higher incomes or parents in high-level occupations. Why this should be the case is unclear. It is not likely to be due to the biases in the sample of Scotland's families who were lost to the survey at Sweep 2 since the main ways in which the MCS2 sample was biased have been taken into account in these analyses.
Family poverty
8. MCS families in Scotland were found to have surprisingly low rates of family poverty, 21%, at Sweep 2 of the Millennium Cohort Study when children were age 3 compared with 26% in the UK as whole . The analyses set out to examine whether the characteristics of the families explained the lower rate of family income poverty for children in Scotland.
9. The analyses showed that the advantage of MCS families in Scotland, of experiencing lower family income poverty than the rest of the UK, can be explained by Scotland's MCS mothers and their families having a combination of characteristics that are keeping them out of poverty to a greater extent than mothers in the rest of the UK. However, the analyses found there were a few ways in which the treatment of Scotland's MCS mothers differs from those in the rest of the UK, given their characteristics. Mothers' characteristics were different in Scotland from the rest of the UK due to differential response rates of MCS1 families in Scotland at the MCS2 interview, compared with the rest of the UK. These differences in responses have left the MCS2 sample of mothers in Scotland relatively more highly educated and more prosperous than those in the rest of the UK. The lower poverty rate in Scotland is therefore an artefact of the data.
Breastfeeding of babies
10. Babies in Scotland were not breastfed to the same extent as babies in other countries of the UK. This information was collected when the children were aged 9-10 months old mainly from their mothers ( MCS Sweep 1). The analyses set out to examine whether it was the characteristics of the families that explained the lower rate of breastfeeding in Scotland.
11. The analyses showed that the lower rate of breastfeeding among mothers in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK is not explained by the differences in characteristics between MCS mothers in Scotland and those in the rest of the UK, as far as we have been able to investigate. The lower rates of breastfeeding in Scotland are robust to the adjustment for a wide range of confounders. In fact, they were lower once these other factors are taken into account which suggests that there is a Scottish effect at work. This finding has implications for policy and research. Attendance at antenatal class appears to have a stronger positive effect on mothers taking up breastfeeding in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. This suggests that policy should seek ways of encouraging attendance at antenatal classes in order to boost breastfeeding rates in Scotland.
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