Family research in Germany has long suffered from a lack of large-scale longitudinal data which complement official statistics for social reporting and go beyond small-scale intensive studies for studying the role of living conditions, family structure, partnership quality and parenting for parents’ and children’s wellbeing. In 2008/2009 the German family panel pairfam has been launched, a multi-cohort multi-actor longitudinal study with annual assessments, funded by the German Research Foundation as part of its long-term funding program for data infrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It now comprises four age cohorts of so-called anchor persons (born in the early 1970ies, 1980ies, 1990ies and 2000s) as well as their partners, children and (to a smaller extent) their 
parents.

This presentation informs about the research potential of the pairfam panel and illustrates the wide range of research opportunities based on this multi-cohort, multi-actor data set. So far, pairfam data have widely been used for family research, mostly focusing sociological and demographic issues. However, as will be shown by selected research examples, the potential of these data extend well into issues of developmental psychology and educational research. The discussion will allow exploring research options for the interested audience.