The BHPS data set is now released under the auspices of the new ESRC UK Longitudinal Studies Centre (ULSC), which is one of the component parts of the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). The BHPS is sponsored by the ESRC, the Health Education Authority, the Office for National Statistics, and Eurostat.
The main objective of the BHPS is to further our understanding of social and economic change at the individual and household level in Britain, to identify, model and forecast such changes, their causes and consequences in relation to a range of socio-economic variables.
A major development at Wave 9 was the recruitment of two additional samples to the BHPS in Scotland and Wales. There were two main aims of the extensions. First, to increase the relatively small Scottish and Welsh sample sizes in order to permit independent analysis of the two countries. Second, to facilitate analysis of the two countries compared to England in order to assess the impacts of the substantial public policy changes which may be expected to follow from devolution.
The BHPS also provides the UK component of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) (from Wave seven onwards).
From the guide to the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-, 1991- [ongoing], (UK Data Archive)
