Growing Up in New Zealand: A longitudinal study of New Zealand children and their families. Residential Mobility Report 1: Moving house in the first 1000 days

Residential Mobility Report 1: Moving house in the first 1000 days is the fifth substantial report from Growing Up in New Zealand, and draws on the information collected from participating families during the first thousand days of their children’s development (from conception until they are 2 years old). This report focusses on the residential mobility of the cohort families during the first two years of their children’s lives. The topic of residential mobility was chosen because it was evident from the early work that Growing Up in New Zealand has provided on defining vulnerability (see Vulnerability Report 1, 2014) that residential mobility for families with young children in New Zealand was very common.

The information available from the Growing Up in New Zealand families also allows a specific examination of residential mobility between late pregnancy and early infancy (up to nine months of age) as well as when the cohort children are between nine months and two years of age. Baseline information was collected from the families about their homes and households from before the cohort children were born. This provides a unique prospective consideration of the familial, household and neighbourhood factors that are associated with residential mobility during the very earliest period of children’s development, in addition to what precipitates mobility as the children grow up. While it is relatively common to move house when family structure is undergoing changes, in this case where a new baby is due or recently born, the extent of residential mobility seen for the children and families in this contemporary longitudinal study was nevertheless unexpected.

Residential Mobility Report 1: Moving house in the first 1000 days has explored whether the factors that were most likely to influence a child’s chances of experiencing residential mobility between late pregnancy and during infancy were the same or different to those most influential for mobility during the second year of the children’s lives. This longitudinal perspective, and an ability to compare determinants of change over different time periods in a child’s life, is a key strength of birth cohort studies such as this one.