Social Housing and Social Exclusion 2000-2011

By some definitions, social housing, social housing tenants are necessarily socially excluded. In other terms, in 2000, social housing tenants were at greater risk of being socially excluded than owner occupiers and private renters on measures of income, employment, education, health, and housing and neighbourhood quality. However, by 2011, basic housing quality in social housing had overtaken that in home ownership, and slight reductions in social exclusion of social tenants in terms of income, employment, and neighbourhood quality at least disproved arguments of inevitable tenurial polarisation. There is evidence that housing and regeneration policies contributed to these changes, but the economy was also important, and population turnover is likely to have played a role. Finally, the gains of 2000-2011 may not be sustained.Social housing, social exclusion, inequality, worklessness, housing quality, neighbourhood quality, participation

Is Targeting Deprived Areas an Effective Means to Reach Poor People? An assessment of one rationale for area-based funding programmes

Area-based programmes have long been a feature of urban policy in the UK. One rationale is that they are an effective means to target poor people. Area deprivation indices are used to identify areas for targeting. This paper reviews the different results produced by these indices. It then examines the effectiveness of the current Index of Multiple Deprivation in targeting the poor, demonstrating that area targeting using the IMD 2000 is a more complete way of reaching the poor than has been claimed by opponents of area-based targeting in the past. However, it is more effective in reaching some sub-groups, particularly children, than others, and is also relatively inefficient. There is a trade off between efficiency and completeness. The use of area targeting should depend on the type of intervention, the costs and benefits of producing complex targeting mechanisms, and the particular balance between completeness and efficiency in each case.area targeting, deprivation, area-based initiatives, neighbourhoods

Using the US and UK censuses for comparative research

Researchers, policymakers, and practitioners are constantly interested in international comparisons as a means to generate and test hypotheses and new ideas. Likewise, they have for centuries relied on census data as a key source of information about the nature and dynamics of nations. This discussion paper, accordingly, reviews key features of the U.S. and U.K. censuses of population, and considers how the two canvasses can be used for comparative research on population, housing, and other key issues. To that end, it offers a guide to the surveys' respective approaches and definitions, and their similarities and differences—all with an eye to helping researchers assess their utility for bilateral comparisons. On balance, the paper concludes that the two nations' censuses—despite their variations of method, terminology, and reporting—hold out exciting potential for comparative analysis

Is Housing Growth Ever Inclusive Growth? Evidence from Three Decades of Housing Development in England and Wales, 1981–2011

There is global concern about who gains from economic growth, including housing development, and global interest in making growth more inclusive. This article creates a new definition of ‘housing growth,’ growth in median space per person. It says that this housing growth is ‘inclusive’ if the worst-off make some gains, and ‘just’ if inequality does not increase. It applies these terms to data for 1981–2011 on rooms per person for England and Wales, the bulk of the UK, a nation with high income inequality but lower housing inequality. At national level, median housing space increased but the worst-off gained nothing, and inequality rose, so growth was neither inclusive nor just. Sub-national evidence shows that housing growth benefitted the worst-off in most areas, but they generally made very modest gains, and growth without increasing inequality was very rare. There was housing growth in all 10 regions except London, it was inclusive in 6 regions, but not just in any region. 97% of local authorities experienced housing growth, and it was inclusive in 72%, but the average gain for the worst-off was just 0.2 rooms/person over thirty years. Only 3% of local authorities achieved both inclusive and just growth. This suggests that in the UK and similar nations, local initiatives will be insufficient to achieve growth with significant gains for the worst-off, and that substantial change to the national system of housing development and allocation is needed. There may be a policy choice between benefitting the worst-off and reducing inequality. There is potential for further and comparative research

Teenage housing tenure and neighbourhoods and the links with adult outcomes: evidence from the 1970 cohort study

This study is one of a pair funded by the Homes and Communities Agency and the Tenant Services Authority. The other report can be found at http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/. This pair of studies develops the findings of two previous reports on the relationship between housing and life chances (Feinstein et al, 2008, Lupton et al, 2009). These previous reports examined housing circumstances in childhood for those born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000, and the relationship between childhood housing and adult outcomes across a range of measures for those born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. They found as yet unexplained connections between being ‘ever’ in social housing in childhood and worse adult outcomes on an overall measure of deprivation and a range of individual measures for those born in 1958 and in 1970 (but not for those born in 1946) (Feinstein et al, 2008, Lupton et al, 2009). Statistically significant associations remained after using a very large set of more than 50 controls for family and individual characteristics, for many outcomes and many ages, although the size of all of the associations was substantially reduced

Building the Big Society

Papers are a contribution to the debate and set out the authors ’ views only Localism and the Big Societ