This data note presents and discussed descriptive statistics of the key variables on individuals’ social origin, cognitive ability and educational attainment that have been constructed based on the information contained in the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). The main sets of variables presented are (1) measures of respondents’ cognitive ability in childhood, (2) parental education, class, status and income, and (3) respondents’ highest qualification and measures indicating whether respondents have crossed different educational qualification thresholds.