Generation New Era: UK Birth Cohort Study Tracks 30,000 Babies Born in 2026 Across the UK

Overview

The Naked Scientists interview Alyssa Goodman about Generation New Era, the UK’s first new national birth cohort study in over two decades. Funded by UKRI through ESRC, the study plans to recruit over 30,000 babies born in 2026 across the four nations to follow them through early life and beyond, shedding light on how early conditions shape outcomes later in life in a world influenced by AI and social media.

"The first really big difference is that we're doing it now, and we're not relying on data that is now very old." - Pasco Theron, co-director of Generation New Era.

Overview and aims

The Naked Scientists, in conversation with Alyssa Goodman from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at UCL, explore Generation New Era, a landmark national birth cohort study designed to recruit around 30,000 babies born in the UK in 2026. This study is described as the most ambitious birth cohort in the UK to date, intended to track children from infancy into adulthood and to illuminate how early life conditions influence outcomes across education, health, relationships, and life chances.

The project sits within a long British tradition of birth cohorts, following generations from the postwar era to the Millennium Cohort Study. Generation New Era aims to modernize this approach by incorporating contemporary changes in family life, technology, and data science, while maintaining the value of cross-cohort comparisons to identify trends and persistent inequalities.

Study design and recruitment

Generation New Era is designed to be nationally representative, with deliberate boosts for ethnic minority groups and low-income families to ensure diversity. Fathers are explicitly included, whether living with the baby or not, and the plan accommodates various family structures, including same-sex couples. Recruitment involves inviting families to participate via letters and follow-up home visits, with opt-out available. The study may include twins and multiple siblings to enrich analyses of shared and distinct developmental factors.

Key practical questions include when families will be contacted (roughly every two years in the early years) and how data will be collected. At birth, families will be invited to participate; subsequent waves include in-home surveys and a smartphone app to enable more frequent, bite-sized data collection between longer visits. This combination aims to chart developmental trajectories during rapid early life changes.

Measuring environments and future challenges

The study faces the challenge of keeping measures relevant as society and technology evolve. Horizon scanning is used to anticipate new phenomena such as digital technologies and AI exposure in home life and education. The team emphasizes measuring these factors in agnostic ways so that the data remains useful for answering as-yet-unknown questions years down the line. A large, collaborative approach—linking with academic and industry partners—helps keep methods at the cutting edge.

"The big ones right now are definitely around social media and AI. AI is the most challenging in a way because we literally, we're all getting our heads around what kind of an effect that might have on society" - Pascoe Theron, co-director of Generation New Era.

Scope, diversity, and representation

Ensuring a representative sample is a core objective. The recruitment process aims to contact a broad cross-section of the population, with proactive outreach to maximize participation across different regions and backgrounds. The Northern Ireland component is highlighted as a special case, given its distinct cultural context and post-conflict social dynamics, with researchers there noting the importance of understanding regional variations in family life, education, and social support.

Data governance and access

Data management is a central feature of Generation New Era. The ESRC requires the data to be deposited so that trusted researchers worldwide can access it for secondary analyses. The project includes training and engagement with researchers and policy makers to maximize the data’s impact and ensure rigorous analysis. There is potential for future data linkages with administrative records and other biosocial data as the study evolves, subject to ethical approvals and participant consent.

What success means for policy and children

Ultimately, the goal is to inform policy and improve children’s lives by understanding how early life conditions and family support interact with services such as childcare and health systems. The study is expected to yield insights across multiple waves, including how parental work patterns, childcare arrangements, and healthcare access shape developmental outcomes and life chances in a rapidly changing era.

"Fundamentally, this is a huge opportunity to make the lives of children better. So in a few years we will have done interviews for wave one and wave two, and we hope to lay down evidence not just for now but for the future" - Alyssa Goodman, co-director, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL.