The paper describes the creation of the Office for National Statistics 2001 output area classification, which was created in collaboration with the authors. The classification places each 2001 census output area into one of seven clusters based on the socio-economic attributes of the residents of each area. The classification uses cluster analysis to reduce 41 census variables to a single socio-economic indicator. The classification was made available with a host of supporting and descriptive information as a National Statistic via National Statistics on line. The classification forms part of a suite of area classifications that were produced by the Office for National Statistics from 2001 census data. Classifications of local authorities, statistical wards and health areas are also available. Copyright 2007 Royal Statistical Society.

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O express a degree of well-being that was both desirable and morally legitimate, early modern Englishmen often chose the term competency. Thus, when William Wood pointed out in i634 that, however rude the circumstances of the first New Englanders might seem, they were "well-contented, and looke not so much at abundance, as a competencie," he was trying to strike just such a decently attractive note. To early modern readers, the idea connoted the possession of sufficient property to absorb the labors of a given family while providing it with something more than a mere subsistence. It meant, in brief, a degree of comfortable independence.1 Such an ideal was necessarily imprecise. One man's comforts could be his neighbor's barest needs, and even in the course of a single lifetime people had to shift their standards upward and downward to fit their changing circumstances. A farm that might be judged prosperous enough to keep a young family in relative independence might not serve equally well as children matured. True, most English households survived at levels of competency that were modest at best. Such qualifications being granted, the ideal of competency nevertheless had a broad constituency within the producing ranks of society, and a vast range of behavior spoke Mr. Vickers is a member of the Department of History at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank, among a great many others

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This paper explores how the various pressures of finance, employability, and part-time work are experienced by undergraduates studying in a Northern Red Brick University. Drawing on the results of a three-year qualitative study that followed 40 students throughout their three years of studies (n =40, n =40, n =38, ntotal=118), the paper details three dimensions by which students understood their part-time employment experiences: the characteristics of employment types; motivations for employment; and, the challenges of shaping their employment experiences around their studies. It is argued that the current shortfalls in the student budget and the pressures of the employability agenda may actually serve to further disadvantage the lower income groups in the form a 'double deficit'. Not only are discrepancies between income and expenditure likely to mean that additional monies are necessary to study for a degree, the resulting need for part-time employment is also likely to constrain both degree outcome and capacity to enhance skills necessary for 'employability'.

Social area classifications group areas on the basis of social or socioeconomic similarity into cluster units which define their demographic and social characteristics. The methods used to create these systems combine geographic thought and theory with statistical manipulations of multivariate data. The development and use of geodemographic systems appear to be restricted within developing countries. Some commentators suggest that area classifications may not offer benefits to these countries. This paper argues that the developing world has a lot to benefit from this type of geography. It presents the case of Nigeria where a classification system has been developed for the 774 Local Government Areas (LGA) of the country. Insight is provided into the variables and methodological approach that has been used to create the Nigerian system.

This paper critically examines how undergraduate students in a Northern Red Brick University have experienced the threefold rise in tuition fees since 2012, with particular attention on how they have begun to understand and negotiate the process of indebtedness. Drawing on a corpus of 118 interviews conducted with a group of 40 undergraduates across their whole student lifecycle, analysis is directed toward examining how students have variously sought to: respond to the policy; reconcile the debt with their decision to study at university; and, how they are beginning to negotiate a life of everyday indebtedness. The findings are located in the context of wider neoliberal policy trends that have continued to emphasise 'cost-sharing' as a mechanism for increased investment within the HE sector generally, and individual fiscal responsibility specifically. Given the lack of any other viable career pathways for both low and higher income students, they had to accept indebtedness as inevitable and take what comfort they could from the discourses of 'foregone gain' that they had been presented with. Evidently, and as the students in our sample well recognised, whether those discourses actually reflect the future remains to be seen. There is also no evidence within our data that students anticipated the subsequent changes to the repayment terms and conditions-a fact that is likely to compound feelings of economic powerlessness and constrain their capacity for financial agency yet further.