Growing Up in New Zealand: A longitudinal study of New Zealand children and their families. Now We Are Four: Describing the preschool years.

Now we are four continues the series of “Now we are” reports providing a high level description of the cohort children at four years of age. It highlights important proximal influences which shape the development of the children in Growing Up in New Zealand. Information in this report is drawn from data collected during the four year face-to-face data collection wave (DCW), collected when the children were approximately 54 months old, and the 31 month and 45 month telephone interviews. The report also draws, in part, upon longitudinal information from the antenatal DCW, the perinatal linked data, the nine month and two year DCWs, and six week, 35 week, and the 23 month telephone interviews. This increasing longitudinal information now provides a detailed description of the cohort children throughout their first four years of life. For some key parameters the description of children and their families at four years of age are compared with their environments during their first 1,000 days of life.

This report describes key issues that have been identified as important for policy related to child health and wellbeing in New Zealand including child obesity, oral health and sleep, social and emotional development, school readiness, family life, housing, residential mobility and poverty.