Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study: Age-30 Follow-up, 2024

This follow-up aims to collect new data from twin participants of the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study when they are 30 years old.

This nationally representative cohort of 2,232 same-sex twin children born in 1994-1995 across England and Wales, together with their 1,116 mothers, has previously been followed up through 5 successive waves to age 18 with 93% retention.

E-Risk spans the full socioeconomic spectrum: 900 young adults grew up in the most disadvantaged homes across England and Wales, 700 age peers are from comfortably-off backgrounds, and 600 from wealthier backgrounds.

At age 30, we will are comprehensively assessing via online video interviews the lives of these young adults (including human-capacity building behaviours, achievement of adult milestones, social relationships and behaviour, occupational and financial situation, mental health and substance use, victimisation exposure, physical health, social mobility), collecting blood samples via nurse home visits, buccal swabs via post, and linking to health, welfare, education, crime, social media, and geographical records.

This updated dataset will be made freely available and widely accessible to researchers across the UK and globally. It will provide a unique resource for conducting genetically informed investigations of how mental health problems, biological factors, social inequality and adversity in the first two decades of life shape variation in mental health, pace of aging, relationships/connectedness, future expectations/aspirations, and prosperity in the third decade of life.