ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVES:To describe the epidemiology and parent-child concordance of hearing, speech reception, vocabulary and language in Australian parent-child dyads at child age 11 to 12 years. DESIGN:Population-based cross-sectional study (Child Health CheckPoint) nested within the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. SETTING:Assessment centres in seven Australian cities and eight regional towns or home visits around Australia, February 2015 to March 2016. PARTICIPANTS:Of all participating CheckPoint families (n=1874), 1516 children (50% female) and 1520 parents (87% mothers, mean age 43.8 years) undertook at least one of four measurements of hearing and language. OUTCOME MEASURES:Hearing threshold (better ear mean of 1, 2 and 4?kHz) from pure-tone audiometry, speech reception threshold, receptive vocabulary, expressive and receptive languages using a sentence repetition task. Parent-child concordance was examined using Pearson's correlation coefficients and adjusted linear regression models. Survey weights and methods accounted for Longitudinal Study of Australian Children's complex sampling and stratification. RESULTS:Children had a similar speech reception threshold to parents (children mean -14.3, SD 2.4; parents -14.9, SD 3.2?dB) but better hearing acuity (children 8.3, SD 6.3; parents 13.4, SD 7.0?decibels hearing level). Standardised sentence repetition scores were similar (children 9.8, SD 2.9; parents 9.1, SD 3.3) but, as expected, parents had superior receptive vocabularies. Parent-child correlations were higher for the cognitively-based language measures (vocabulary 0.31, 95%?CI 0.26 to 0.36; sentence repetition 0.29, 95%?CI 0.24 to 0.34) than the auditory measures (hearing 0.18, 95%?CI 0.13 to 0.23; speech reception threshold 0.18, 95%?CI 0.13 to 0.22). Mother-child and father-child concordances were similar for all measures. CONCLUSIONS:We provide population reference values for multiple measures spanning auditory and verbal communication systems in children and mid-life adults. Concordance values aligned with previous twin studies and offspring studies in adults, in keeping with polygenic heritability that is modest for audition but around 60% for language by late childhood.