Homelessness is soaring, with serious health implications for those affected

Same data—different stories

In this paper, we examine the mental health effects of lowering the UK's benefit cap in 2016. This policy limits the total amount a household with no‐one in full‐time employment can receive in social security. We treat the reduction in the cap as a natural policy experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not, and examining the risk of experiencing poor mental health both before and after the cap was lowered. Drawing on data from ~900,000 individuals, we find that the prevalence of depression or anxiety among those at risk of being capped increased by 2.6 percentage points (95% confidence interval: 1.33–3.88) compared with those at a low risk of being capped. Capping social security may increase the risk of mental ill health and could have the unintended consequence of pushing out‐of‐work people even further away from the labour market.

Many studies of neighbourhood deprivation have confirmed that there is more continuity than change in the geography of deprivation. This stable geography can lead to an unwarranted inference that the households living on low incomes in these areas comprise a relatively static population. This paper develops the use of administrative data for the longitudinal observation of low income families in small areas, which is underdeveloped despite the widespread use of administrative data in the cross-sectional measurement of neighbourhood deprivation. An empirical measure of local poverty dynamics -the poverty turnover rate âe" is introduced, and created for small areas using housing benefit data for the city of Oxford between 2010 and 2014.A high turnover of poor families is observed and the poverty turnover rate is able to identify small areas with higher and lower turnover rates than the average for the city. The high turnover rates discovered in this study suggest that in this city it is primarily the flows of people in and out of the area, and in and out of low income, that maintains the concentration of poor families, rather than a static population of poor families. This approach can be used to provide a richer understanding of the population and income dynamics that underpin stability and change in the geography of poverty, of use to regeneration policy and the academic studies of gentrification, health inequalities and neighbourhood effects.

A recent change in the geography of poverty in Britain has been reported: it appears to be becoming more evenly distributed in major cities, such that low income individuals are less likely to be living in the highest poverty areas. Studying all local authority areas in England between 2005 and 2014, this paper finds that this phenomenon is strongly differentiated by age group and local authority type. Poverty amongst children and working age people is becoming more evenly distributed in almost all local authority types, with the largest changes occurring in the most urban areas. The change is strongly associated with the increasing proportion of low income households living in private sector housing. Conversely, there is evidence of an increasing residential concentration of poverty at older ages. The paper also proposes a method for decomposing a change in rates between changes in the numerator and changes in the denominator. It concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for area effects, area-based initiatives and gentrification by displacement.

A recent 'return to the city' by middle-class professionals in England, the increasing 'suburbanisation' of poverty and an ongoing housing crisis has increased the salience of concerns about neighbourhood gentrification via the involuntary displacement of established working class residents. This paper reports a systematic analysis of gentrification and income poverty in England that adopts innovative methodological approaches: a multivariate index of gentrification; propensity score matching to establish a comparison group; and sensitivity testing with respect to different 'gentrification' definitions. The paper investigates three possible theoretical processes that could have driven the observed decline in income poverty rates in gentrifying areas: inward mobility to areas, outward mobility from areas and in-situ changes in poverty status. The post-recession period 2010-2014 is studied using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. There is good evidence from aggregate and individual-level analyses for a relationship between inward mobility, poverty status and area gentrification. In addition, people moving to gentrifying areas were more likely to have a university degree and more likely to be in the professional occupational class than people who moved to non-gentrifying comparison areas. On the other hand, no such relationships are found for outward mobility. The strongest evidence is found for 'exclusionary displacement' (the restricted ability of low income households to move in to an area) rather than 'direct displacement' (increased outward mobility of existing residents) as the dominant driver of gentrification in this period.

This article examines how intensifying inequality in the UK plays out at a local level, in order to bring out the varied ways polarisation takes place ‘on the ground’. It brings a community analysis buttressed by quantitative framing to the study of economic, spatial and relational polarisation in four towns in the UK. We distinguish differing dynamics of ‘elite-based’ polarisation (in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells) and ‘poverty-based’ polarisation (in Margate and Oldham). Yet there are also common features. Across the towns, marginalised communities express a sense of local belonging. But tensions between social groups also remain strong and all towns are marked by a weak or ‘squeezed middle’. We argue that the weakness of intermediary institutions, including but not limited to the ‘missing middle’, and capable of bridging gaps between various social groups, provides a major insight into both the obstacles to, and potential solutions for, re-politicising inequality today.

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