Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
The 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity policies have had profoundly damaging impacts for young adults across Europe in ways which threaten to seriously undermine their capacity to make successful transitions to adult independence.Nevertheless, reliable evidence on youth living standards and living conditions in the wake of these cataclysmic events has been scarce.This chapter provides new evidence on the nature, extent and social distribution of vulnerability to poverty and social exclusion amongst young adults in the UK. The work described here updates earlier analyses of the 1999 PSE-GB study using a comparable methodology. The chapter therefore examines trends in poverty and wider forms of social exclusion for young adults over the 1999-2012 period.These data reveal a dramatic increase in youth material and social deprivation over this period and, using a range of different measures, a rise in the extent of youth poverty which requires urgent policy action.
This chapter focuses on several key areas of poverty and social exclusion experienced by older people and pensioners using B-SEM. Analyses by pensioner household type (n=2,296) show differences in older adults’: access to material, economic and social resources; participation in common social activities and civic and political participation; and quality of life. Younger pensioners (particularly couples) are least likely to report lower resources and exclusion from participation, and more likely to report higher quality of life. In contrast, older and single (particularly female) pensioners are most likely to report lower levels of economic and social resources and lower scores on participation and quality of life sub-domains. Although the general position of pensioners has improved over the past decade, the findings conclude that this has not been the case for all pensioners. The policy situation explaining some of these disparities and the implications for further policy action are discussed.
This chapter details findings on child poverty and social exclusion from the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey (PSE2012).It details the turbulent policy context in relation to child poverty in the years between the PSE1999 and PSE2012.It details the stability in perceptions of child necessities over time, and adult perspectives on children’s needs in 2012.The use of adult respondents in research on child poverty, and the implications of this in relation to how data can be interpreted, are detailed – and we recommend the inclusion of children in future similar studies.Findings indicate disturbingly high levels of child poverty in the UK, within a policy context which is likely to exacerbate this even further.Contrary to policy and popular rhetoric, we find no support for the idea that parental behaviours rather than ‘genuine’ poverty are the cause of children going without.Rather, parents are making substantial and personally detrimental sacrifices to ensure that their children are provided for.
This chapter provides an introduction to the volume. It sets out the historical development of the PSE approach to the measurement of poverty and social exclusion, and summarises the economic and social context within which the latest survey took place. The definition and measures of poverty covered by the survey are presented, as is the approach to defining and measuring social exclusion. The chapter concludes with an outline the structure of the rest of the book. An appendix provides technical details on the surveys.
The largest UK research study on poverty and social exclusion ever conducted reveals startling levels of deprivation. 18m people are unable to afford adequate housing; 14m can’t afford essential household goods; and nearly half the population have some form of financial insecurity. Defining poverty as those whose lack of resources forces them to live below a publicly agreed minimum standard, this text provides unique and detailed insights into the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion in the UK today. Written by a team of leading academics, the book reports on the extent and nature of poverty for different social groups: older and younger people; parents and children; ethnic groups; men and women; disabled people; and across regions through the recent period of austerity. It reflects on where government policies have made an impact and considers potential future developments. A companion volume Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK Volume 2 focuses on different aspects of poverty and social exclusion identified in the study.
This chapter provides an overview of a conceptual framework and analytical tool for measuring UK living standards (UK-LS). It aims to supplement and complement B-SEM and PSE poverty and social exclusion measures by combining objective indicators of living conditions (resources) and subjective assessments of those living conditions (outcomes) falling into eleven dimensions under three overarching domains: ‘what we have’, ‘what we do’, and ‘where we live’. Descriptive and exploratory analyses using selected examples of ‘what we have’ domain reveals that individuals with varying levels of ‘resources’ (ie. income, wealth, material goods etc) differ on objective and subjective ‘outcomes’ of living standards within and across living standards dimensions. We conclude that multidimensional indicators of living standards can provide a supplementary and complementary evidence base to inform policy and research by expanding focus beyond those traditionally considered poor or socially excluded for those higher up the range of living standards. However, in order for the conceptual model and analytical framework to be useful, potential users must be clear about resources versus outcomes when seeking to uncover the complex interactions (and associations) between objective and subjective indicators of living standards and equally important the purpose for which the UK-LS analytical framework is being used.
All politicians from all political parties in the UK agree that poverty is ‘bad’ things which should be reduced/eradicated.There is political unanimity about this, however, there is also often passionate contestation about the causes and solutions to poverty and, in particular, who is to blame for poverty. This chapter both describes the Poverty and Social Exclusion project’ methodological approach and draws on over 200 years of poverty research to reach the following conclusions: 1) Poverty is not behaviour – most poverty has a structural cause; 2) Poverty is not a disease – you cannot catch poverty from your parents nor transmit it to your friends, relatives or children; 3) The underclass is a persistent myth – which has never existed; 4) Redistribution is the only solution to child poverty – only adults can provide the resources that children need. Failure to learn these lessons from research invariably results in ineffective and inefficient anti-poverty policies such as the £1 billion Troubled Families programme.
Urban and rural locations may have different levels of poverty or social exclusion but also different combinations of problems or forms of exclusion. Understanding these differences is important both for the allocation of resources but also for the development of appropriate policies or interventions. Overall, this chapter argues that the similarities between urban and rural areas are greater than the differences. There are substantial levels of poverty in urban and rural locations although most measures show higher levels in more urban locations. There are notable differences between measures, however, with low income measures inflating estimates of poverty in more rural locations compared with other measures, notably those based on deprivation. Contrary to expectations in much of the literature, we do not find strong differences in the forms of exclusion in different areas: some aspects are worse in urban locations (notably neighbourhood problems and subjective well-being), while others are worse in rural places (notably transport and access to services). The experience of poverty is equally shaming in urban and rural locations. The main message for policy is the need to focus on core national policies to tackle poverty and exclusion in rural and urban locations alike.
The Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix (BSEM) identifies multiple domains of social exclusion, and the PSE-UK 2012 survey successfully operationalised these for the first time in a single UK household survey. There are many approaches which can be used to explore the relationships between the multiple domains. This chapter uses two different approaches to see how consistent the picture is between them. There is considerable overlap or correlation between some of the domains, suggesting that the original ten can be reduced to a smaller number of broader groups. Material resources and hence poverty not only form one of the main dimensions of exclusion, but also correlate with many other aspects of exclusion. In other words, poverty and deprivation are at the core of the concept of exclusion. Nevertheless, there are aspects of exclusion which are much less connected to material disadvantage, if at all. The concept – and its operationalisation in the PSE-UK survey – therefore succeeds in drawing attention to a wider set of processes producing disadvantage.
Based on the largest UK study of its kind ever commissioned in the UK, this book provides the most detailed national picture of poverty and social exclusion. Chapters consider a wide range of dimensions of disadvantage, covering aspects of household resources, participation and quality of life. On resources, the book charts changing views about the social minimum over the last fifty years as well as changes in living standards and poverty in particular. Analyses also look at the importance of non-financial resources including access to local services and the kinds of support provided by social networks. Participation in society is examined in relation to economic activities, specifically employment, and civic or political engagement as well as social activities. For quality of life, chapters explore quality of health, housing and the wider living environment and subjective perceptions of well-being, as well as exposure to a range of social harms. Finally, the book draws the various strands together through a multi-dimensional analysis of social exclusion.
