Seven Ages of Man and Woman: A Look at Life in Britain in the Second Elizabethan Era

There is no question that we are living in a very different world from the one Shakespeare knew. But there have also been dramatic changes in our society in just the past few decades.

And nowadays, we have the kind of detailed information we need to try and make sense of these changes.

The investments that ESRC and other funders have made in world renowned large-scale datasets like the British Household Panel Survey, the Workplace Employment Relations Survey and the three birth cohort studies are paying off handsomely in helping us to understand key social and economic issues.

This report has been conceived as a way of demonstrating the value of these resources and of the top quality social science research that analyses them – a showcase of just some of the insights we are getting and their potential impact on policy and practice in a wide range of arenas. We are publishing it at the beginning of Social Science Week 2004, an ESRC initiative taking place across the UK and intended to provide everyone – from schoolchildren to politicians – with the opportunity to learn about research currently being undertaken by the country’s leading social scientists. We believe this work can and will contribute to better policy making and, ultimately, to a better society.