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Background:  Increasing evidence suggests that childhood language problems persist into early adulthood. Nevertheless, little is known about how individual and environmental characteristics influence the language growth of individuals identified with speech/language problems.

Method:  Individual growth curve models were utilised to examine how speech/language impairment and environmental variables (socioeconomic status, family separation, and maternal factors) influence vocabulary development from age 5 to 25. Participants were taken from a community sample of children initially diagnosed with speech/language problems at age 5 and their sex‐ and age‐matched controls.

Results:  The language impaired group had significantly poorer receptive vocabulary than the speech impaired and control groups throughout the 20‐year period. Family income was a significant predictor of vocabulary growth …