Launch of new Growing Up in Ireland report: ‘Growing Up in Ireland: The Lives of 17/18-Year-Olds’

The Growing Up in Ireland study team launches its latest report: 'Growing Up in Ireland: The Lives of 17/18-Year-Olds' by Eoin McNamara, Daráine Murphy, Aisling Murray, Emer Smyth and Dorothy Watson.

This new report focuses on the lives of young people who were 17/18 years old in 2015/2016 and who have been followed by the researchers since they were 9 years old.  As the cohort was preparing to make the transition to adulthood, the national context was a period of employment growth and recovery, following the Great Recession, but well before the current COVID-19 challenge. The initial results from this wave were published in late 2016.  This latest report provides more detailed findings and more extensive insights into the lives of these young people in the context of their earlier experiences and in the context of national and international research on this age group.   The results cover the socio-economic circumstances of the families in which the 17/18-year-olds lived and young people’s outcomes in key domains of health, socio-emotional development, school/cognitive development and their broadening engagement with society. 

The report will be launched by Dr Roderic O’Gorman, T.D., Minister for Children, Disability, Equality, and Integration.

Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) is the national longitudinal study of children. It is funded by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, with a contribution from The Atlantic Philanthropies. The study is managed and overseen by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in association with the Central Statistics Office. It is carried out by a consortium of researchers led by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD).



The findings of the report were discussed on a live webinar. You can watch the webinar below.