Modelling Socioeconomic Neighbourhood Change due to Internal Migration in England

Abstract

In England, deprived neighbourhoods were the focus of a number of policy initiatives constructed by the previous Labour government. The evaluations of these programmes and other earlier interventions have shown that attempts to improve neighbourhood socioeconomic outcomes might be affected by people selectively moving in and out of targeted areas. Nonetheless, there is very little evidence that provides an appreciation of this effect. This paper examines the effect of internal migration on the concentration of low-income families in neighbourhoods in England during 2002–07 using a multilevel growth curve model. Explanatory variables in the model include the regional area and district type of a neighbourhood as well as whether the neighbourhood is ranked within the 20 per cent most deprived in England. The findings suggest that deprived neighbourhoods increase their concentration of poor families at a faster rate than all other neighbourhoods. However, the increase is marginal.

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