ONS Service Leavers Beta-testing project
In this project we aim to highlight how administrative data can be used to better understand the social circumstances of former armed services personnel.
Overview:
This study investigates how service in the UK Armed Forces shapes social mobility and health, while beta-testing the new census question pertaining to veteran status and its imputed values.
We will assess the completeness and accuracy of the imputed values of the service leavers question, by comparing socioeconomic and health profiles of cases, with and without direct veteran responses.
By exploiting the longitudinal structure and occupation- and income-specific indicators in the ONS LS, we aim to map veterans’ long-term mobility trajectories and to explore which health disparities are explained by differences in childhood SES versus service experience.
Research Focus
Our research will:
- Evaluate the potential of linking currently available data to provide a basis for research into ex-armed forces personnel
- Contribute to the development of reusable data that will be made available to the wider academic community
- Examine social mobility, we reconstruct childhood socioeconomic status (age ≤ 16) from early census records and compare it with adult status in 2021.
- Estimate how military service relates to upward or downward mobility.
- Assesses the completeness and accuracy of the imputed values of the service leavers question by comparing socioeconomic and health profiles of cases with and without direct veteran responses.
Objectives:
First, we will describe veterans’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics at the 2021 enumeration, including occupation, income proxies, and different measures of self-assessed health such as disability, and long-term illness indicator.
Secondly, the findings from this work will support refinement to the census service-leaver question and offer a robust, longitudinal portrait of veterans’ social and health outcomes, informing policies to enhance their well-being.
Finally we seek to compare and assess the accuracy and reliability of existing datasets for 'veteran-centred research'.
Data sources:
- Ministry of Defence records
- Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS LS) - 1% representative
- 2011 census England and Wales from 1971 to 2021
Researchers
Iain Atherton, Umair Ali, Carles Ibanez, Alexandria C. Smith, Nicola T. Fear, Sharon A.M.Stevelink
