Moving home during childhood: is it harmful?

Abstract

Approximately 50 per cent of children in Scotland move home in their first 10 years of life. Many families move home when they have young children; this could be because of the need for larger housing; more suitable residential areas; parental separation; or precarious housing situations, such as renting. These moves may affect children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. In this policy briefing, we report quantitative evidence from a cohort of children born in the early 2000s collected in the ‘Growing Up in Scotland’ study. The findings indicate that children that move home tend to fare worse in terms of their socio-emotional development. This is particularly true if they move more than once. Evidence on cognitive achievement is more mixed, with children who move more faring worse at age five. But by age 10, there seems to be no difference in cognitive achievement between children who have moved and children who have not. A large part of the negative effect of moving home is explained by the lower socio-economic backgrounds of the families who move more frequently. Other life experiences which trigger a move, such as parental separation, are also important. The findings show, however, that over and above the effect of social background and life experiences of mobile children, frequent moves do seem to have a detrimental impact on children’s development.

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ORCID for Teresa Mcgowan: orcid.org/0009-0002-9231-3743

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