Small Fortunes : National Survey of the Lifestyles and Living Standards of Children, 1995

The Small Fortunes Survey is the first ever nationally representative survey of the lifestyles and living standards of British children. Taking the child as the unit of analysis, its main aims were :<br> to establish household expenditure on children and to investigate variation by income, age and gender of child and by family size and status;<br> to estimate certain of the indirect costs imposed by child rearing;<br> to determine the nature and extent of extra household support for children;<br> to specify and compare, the minimum direct costs of children according to budget standard, consensual, self-assessment and behavioural definitions;<br> to examine the nature and degree of poverty in childhood according to those definitions given above;<br> to investigate the 'economics of parenting': the extent to which children's aspirations are met at the expense of the living standards of parents; parent/child interactions on finance; parents' economic aspirations for their children;<br> to explore childhood living standards from children's own perspectives, investigating their experience of money and its management; knowledge and understanding of the family's financial circumstances in the context of the immediate neighbourhood and wider society.