This proposal is for the creation of Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) from British censuses 1961 to 1981 and reconstruction of a 2001 SAR using record-level data recovered from archive tapes by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Current changes to ONS IT infrastructure and some benefits from contemporary census processing present a unique moment of opportunity to recover these historical data and to create a rich new research resource for the analysis of social change over the last 50 years. The insights likely to be revealed from these data directly address ESRC's current priorities of 'Influencing behaviour and informing interventions' (e.g. 'How does the interplay of childhood, family, community and wider society influence inequalities in wellbeing?') and 'A vibrant and fair society' (e.g.,'How mobile is our society?'). In relation to both of these objectives ESRC has articulated a clear intention to make better use of existing data and to deepen the capacity of the UK research community.