There have been three sweeps to date of the ESRC-funded MCS: the first took place between June 2001 and January 2003, gathering information from the parents of 18,819 babies born in the UK; the second sweep took place between September 2003 and April 2005 with the children at around 3 years of age, and the third in early 2006, when the children started primary school. The Centre for Longitudinal Studies headed the consortium responsible for running the first two sweeps. The broad objective of the MCS is to create a new multi-purpose longitudinal dataset, describing the diversity of backgrounds from which children born in the new century are setting out on life. To download the data visit:
http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/mcsTitles.asp
