Exploring affordability: what can housing associations do to better support their tenants?
This report presents findings from research looking at the issues affecting housing association tenants’ household budgets, what helps or makes it harder to manage and what else could housing providers or others do to more effectively support tenants and help budgets go further. A range of ideas were developed and reviewed through a series of interviews and group discussions with housing association tenants and staff. This report sets out some of the ways in which the role of housing provider could be enhanced to better support tenants with costs that exert pressures on constrained budgets, and can result in problems paying rent and affording other essentials.
The research was completed before Covid-19 hit the UK, however themes identified in the study – the importance of a decent home, dealing with pressure on incomes, digital inclusion, and the need for support with looking for work or with financial concerns – are potentially even more pertinent in the current climate. The research also included an evidence review of effective practice by UK housing providers and data analysis of housing costs and household incomes. The research was commissioned by Futures Housing Group, a social housing provider in the East Midlands.
Hill, K., Padley, M. and Stone, J. (2020) Exploring affordability: what can housing associations do to better support their tenants? Loughborough, Centre for Research in Social Policy.
Home truths: Young adults living with their parents in low to middle income families
A growing proportion of young people in the UK are living with their parents well into early adulthood. This report has been produced as part of a project funded by Standard Life Foundation which aims to investigate the economic and financial challenges facing low to middle income families where young adults live with their parents. The report presents findings from the first phase of the study – comprising data analysis, a literature review and policy mapping - to provide a comprehensive look at the living standards of low to middle income families in what is becoming a ‘normal’ life stage for young people. The findings provide a profile of the extent and circumstances of such families and the financial and policy landscape they face. It highlights influences including increased housing costs, the precarity of young adults’ labour market experience, and changing social norms, but also the complex picture of determinants and experiences as co-residence is not clearly more common in better off or worse off families, and is not seen solely in positive or negative terms by those involved. Much depends on individuals’ circumstances, including on the transition points experienced in young people’s lives and on the resources that each of the family members can bring to the arrangement.
Hill, K., Hirsch, D., Stone, J. and Webber, R. (2020) Home truths: Young adults living with their parents in low to middle income families, Edinburgh, Standard Life Foundation.
Local indicators of child poverty after housing costs, 2018-19
Our latest indicators of local child poverty, published by the End Child Poverty campaign, show an alarming increase in child poverty rates, provide the most robust local estimates of child poverty to date. They build on official data from tax and benefit records, which DWP and HMRC have used to produce local estimates of child poverty. These official figures do not take account of housing costs, underestimating the extent of low disposable income, especially in London and southern England. We have therefore modelled the effect of local housing costs to produce an "after housing cost (AHC)" poverty estimate. This involves using survey data to estimate the correlation between private rent levels and the ratio of AHC to BHC poverty, and applying the result to each local area.
Hirsch, D. and Stone, J. (2020) Local indicators of child poverty after housing costs, 2018-19. London: End Child Poverty
The cost of pensioner poverty and the non-take-up of Pension Credit
This report estimates the additional costs associated with non-take-up of Pension Credit. Pension credit guarantees that pensioners’ incomes can be topped up at least to £173.75 a week for singles and £265.20 for couples, if their incomes fall below this level. In principle, this should eliminate serious poverty for pensioners. However, around a million eligible pensioners do not claim Pension Credit. This causes them to lose out on an average of £49 a week, and to be at risk of deep poverty. This not only damages the well-being of those concerned, but also costs the state money as a result of the greater spending on health and social care needed for pensioners whose lives have been damaged by poverty. This report estimates that £4 billion a year would be saved in public spending if everyone eligible were to take up Pension Credit. The higher health and social care spending associated with pensioner poverty is substantially larger than the estimated £2.16 billion saved by the Treasury as a result of non-take-up of Pension Credit. The benefits of higher take-up would therefore be twofold. First, it could save public money over the long term, as better incomes feed through to better health outcomes and a lower social care bill. Second, the evidence shows that it can improve the lives of pensioners currently not claiming their entitlement. This puts it at the top of the agenda for reducing pensioner poverty.
Hirsch, D. and Stone, J. (2020) The cost of pensioner poverty and non-take-up of Pension Credit. London: Independent Age
After a Decade of Austerity, Does the UK Have an Income Safety Net Worth its Name?
In this chapter in Social Policy Review, Donald Hirsch argues that the UK's income 'safety net' is not providing any systematic form of protection against lack of income, since there appears to be no lower limit to how far entitlements can fall. Demonstrating the weakness of a system that has never had meaningful links with what claimants actually need, the chapter tracks the way in which entitlements for many have declined relative to minimum requirements. This has varied in arbitrary ways for different groups, and most recently has selectively limited entitlements, for example for larger families, further detaching them from need.
Hirsch, D. (2020) ‘After a Decade of Austerity, Does the UK Have an Income Safety Net Worth its Name?’ in J. Rees, M. Pomati and E. Heins (ed) Social Policy Review 32. Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2020. Bristol: Policy Press
Applying the Minimum Income Standard in diverse national contexts
This chapter looks at three countries where MIS research has recently been conducted – Mexico, Singapore and South Africa – and considers how the definitions, construction and purposes of MIS research are shaped and influenced by particular national contexts. The chapter briefly outlines how the MIS approach has been applied in the UK and in Europe, before exploring the application of MIS in countries and contexts that are very different to the UK and Europe. The chapter explores how minimum living standards have been defined in diverse national contexts, at how minimum needs have been researched practically, and at how MIS has been, or is intended to be, used within these different social, cultural and political contexts. The chapter emphasises that although the MIS approach provides a common basis for creating consensual country- specific budget standards, it does not produce or enable direct comparisons of living standards across countries. What it does enable is minimum incomes in each country to be set, which take into account national norms and priorities.
Padley, M. and Davis, A. (2020) 'Applying the Minimum Income Standard in diverse national contexts’ in C. Deeming (ed.) Minimum Income Standards and Reference Budgets: international and comparative policy perspectives. Bristol: Policy Press.
Living on Different Incomes in London: Can public consensus identify a 'riches line'?
There is widespread social and political concern about economic inequality in the UK, but relatively little research examining what people think about high incomes and wealth. This report is drawn from an innovative study aiming to find out whether there was public consensus on a point at which high income and/or wealth becomes excessive. The research was conducted in London, where economic inequality is particularly pronounced and plainly visible.
Using a variation on the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) methodology developed by CRSP at Loughborough University this project brought together groups of higher, lower and mixed income citizens to discuss different increasingly high levels of living standards above the minimum (described by MIS research). The discussion groups were able to identify and agree on ‘consumption bundles’ of assets, goods, activities and services that they associated with living at progressively higher living standards. However, having considered the benefits and disadvantages of some individuals having a very high level of wealth and assets, they were unable to agree that there was a point beyond which financial resources (whether income, wealth or both) could be considered excessive. The project was a collaboration between researchers at Loughborough and Birmingham Universities and the London School of Economics and was funded by Trust for London.
Davis, A., Hecht, K., Burchardt, T., Gough, I., Hirsch, D., Rowlingson, K. and Summers, K. (2020) Living on Different Incomes in London: Can public consensus identify a 'riches line'? London: Trust for London.
The role of Social Support Networks in Helping Low Income Families through Uncertain Times
This journal article draws on CRSP's research with low income families to focus on how friends and relatives can provide them with a valuable 'safety net' in the context of labour market insecurity and retrenchment of state support. Drawing on our qualitative longitudinal study, it shows how such support plays a crucial role in helping families cope with hard times and periods of crisis. Yet it also shows that, over time, such support can itself be an insecure resource that can fluctuate as those who provide it experience changes in their own lives. A policy challenge is to help reinforce and not undermine the conditions that enable valuable social support to be offered and sustained, while ensuring sufficient reliable state support to avoid families having no choice but to depend on this potentially fragile resource as a safety net.
Hill, K., Hirsch, D., and Davis, A. (2020) The Role of Social Support Networks in Helping Low Income Families through Uncertain Times. Social Policy and Society, 1-16. Doi:10.1017/S1474746420000184
The Minimum Income Standard and equivalisation: reassessing relative costs of singles and couples and of adults and children
Measures of household income, used to monitor income adequacy and poverty, require ‘equivalence scales’ to adjust for the composition of different households, so that low income for a single person means something different from say a large family. But the method used to derive these scales has been widely critiqued as arbitrary and not necessarily reflecting the real world. This pathbreaking article uses direct assessment of minimum costs in different countries, using Minimum Income Standard research, to assess the main international scale. Drawing on evidence from France, Ireland, Portugal and UK, it finds that the scales consistently underestimate the relative cost of children compared to adults, and also tend to underestimate costs for single adults compared to couples. Its stark conclusion is that low income and poverty for children, especially those with lone parents, is being consistently underestimated.
Hirsch, D., Concialdi, P., Math, A., Padley, M., Pereira, E., Pereirinha, J., and Thornton, R. (2020) The Minimum Income Standard and equivalisation: Reassessing relative costs of singles and couples and of adults and children. Journal of Social Policy, 1-20. doi:10.1017/S0047279419001004