Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Small Fortunes Survey is the first ever nationally representative survey of the lifestyles and living standards of British children. Taking the child as the unit of analysis, its main aims were : to establish household expenditure on children and to investigate variation by income, age and gender of child and by family size and status; to estimate certain of the indirect costs imposed by child rearing; to determine the nature and extent of extra household support for children; to specify and compare, the minimum direct costs of children according to budget standard, consensual, self-assessment and behavioural definitions; to examine the nature and degree of poverty in childhood according to those definitions given above; to investigate the 'economics of parenting': the extent to which children's aspirations are met at the expense of the living standards of parents; parent/child interactions on finance; parents' economic aspirations for their children; to explore childhood living standards from children's own perspectives, investigating their experience of money and its management; knowledge and understanding of the family's financial circumstances in the context of the immediate neighbourhood and wider society.

Main Topics:

The dataset includes the following files : 'adult1' : data from the first interview with the main carer of the child, covering household composition, occupation of adults in household, childcare for selected child, baby-sitting for selected child, housing tenure and size, attitudes to parenting, parental sacrifice, parental aspirations, index of childhood deprivation, access to facilities, parent-child interactions on finance and grouped household income. 'adult2' : data from second interview with main carer of the child, including educational background of adults in family, household ownership of consumer durables, household income, opportunity costs for main carer associated with the selected child, index of adult deprivation, household savings, housing costs, insurance, other household bills, car ownership and cost, household debts, loans and credit, parent assessed cost of all children in household, parent-assessed measures of deprivation, family relationships and health. 'babgear' : data from self-completion inventory of equipment, clothes and toys for selected child under two years old. 'clthposs' : data from self-completion inventory of equipment, clothes and toys for selected child over two years old. 'prescexp' : data from self-completion diary of expenditure on food, activities and other purchases for selected child not in full-time school. 'schexp' : data from self-completion diary of expenditure on food, school activities, out-of-school activities, phone calls, other purchases and pocket money for selected child in full-time school. 'selfcomp' : data from self-completion questionnaire on outings and holidays, birthdays, savings and earnings for selected child. 'xmas' : data from self-completion questionnaire on Christmas expenditure for selected child. 'child' : data from interview with selected child, covering pocket money, earnings from employment, items child aspires to own, attitudes to area, knowledge of family income and expenditure, child/parent interactions on finance, career aspirations.

Multi-stage stratified random sample

full details of sampling procedure may be found in the codebook

Face-to-face interview

Self-completion

Diaries

CAPI was used for the interviews