News Archive 2024

CASE News
Podcast with Dr Tania Burchardt and Will Hutton on the impact of wealth inequality

The Fairness Foundation have launched a Wealth Gap Risk Register – an online evidence resource about the impacts of wealth inequality, how to reduce it and mitigate its impacts, and public attitudes to it.

To mark the launch, Compass hosted on a live podcast Will Hutton, the chair of Fairness Foundation Editorial Board, , and Dr Tania Burchardt, Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE. The discussion focused on how wealth inequality spills over into democracy, social relations, economic security, a fair tax system, public services and so on – and how to tackle this.

Find out more and listed to the recorded podcast on the Compass website. 

CASE News
Welfare Reform and Larger Families project and the two-child benefit cap

The project 'Welfare reform and larger families' has been looking into the two-child benefit limit. Read about the project itself and its impact in the latest discussions on the benefit cap.  

Project page

Big Issue: What is the two-child benefit cap and how does it impact families?

Big Issue: Benefit cap and unaffordable rents leave tens of thousands of families at risk of destitution

The Guardian: I have three daughters. These are the ways the two-child benefit limit affects us every single day

Wales online: DWP rule leaving some people with just £4 a day

The Canary: DWP benefit cap: could you live on £3 per day? Because that's the reality.

CASE News
LSE Housing and Communities blog posts on high rise buildings and city open spaces

Ellie Benton and Ruby Russell from LSE Housing and Communities recently facilitated a series of knowledge exchange workshops with built environment professionals, leading to the publication of two blogs in the LSE London blogs. 

The first blog discussed wellbeing in high rise housing and how residents experience these buildings by bringing together experts from a range of sectors to gain a better understanding of what factors affect residents’ wellbeing. Participants included architects, developers, local authority officers and academics. 

You can read it in this link. 

The second blog explored the protection of open space in a city bringing the views of built environment professionals and on whether delivering more homes justify a reduction in access to open space or whether we need to rethink our approach to the relationship between high-rise housing and green space.

You can read it in this link. 

CASE News
New journal article: Living Arrangements, Intra-Household Inequality and Children's Deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC

The paper “Living Arrangements, Intra-Household Inequality and Children’s Deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC” by Eleni Karagiannaki and Tania Burchardt has been published in the Child Indicators Research. 

The article investigates the extent to which living in the different multi-family household types protects children against deprivation and provide tests of the relationship between the intrahousehold sharing of resources and children’s deprivation.

You can read the paper in the link below:

Living Arrangements, Intra-Household Inequality and Children’s Deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC | Child Indicators Research (springer.com)

CASE News
“Transition to Adulthood in an Intergenerational Family Context” A new Understanding working paper authored by Eleni Karagiannaki

A new Understanding Society working paper authored by Eleni Karagiannaki analyses how young people’s transitions into adulthood in the UK have changed over time and how these changes are shaped by social and economic conditions. The paper shows that the transition to adulthood underwent significant changes for successive cohorts of young adults in the UK. Even though there has been convergence in the transitions to adulthood trajectories among young adults from different social backgrounds, the transition to adulthood remains strongly socially stratified and influenced by social and economic conditions. This paper is part of work conducted as part of an Understanding Society Fellowship “Transition to adulthood in the UK in an intergenerational context” (link to the project website here). 

You can read the paper in the link below:

Transition to adulthood in an intergenerational family context: a cohort and gender analysis based on Understanding Society – Understanding Society

CASE News
New CASE report: Tackling London’s Household Debts Problem by Eleni Karagiannaki

CASE in partnership with StepChange has undertaken an investigation to understand the extent, severity and nature of household over-indebtedness in London and to assess the reach of debt advice services. The new CASE report Tackling London’s Household Debts Problem by Eleni Karagiannaki includes findings from this project. The report provides estimates of the proportion of the adult population in London and in the UK overall that are highly over-indebted and in urgent need of debt advice and shows how the reach of debt advice services differ for different socio-economic groups. 

Read the report here and executive summary here.

CASE News
Review of UK Material Deprivation Measures – published by the Department for Work and Pensions

Material deprivation is one of the official measures of poverty in the UK.  In contrast to income-based measures which assess poverty risks based on whether or not household income is below a pre-determined poverty line, material deprivation measures take a more direct approach.  These measures use self-reported information on whether or not individuals can afford a selection of everyday items and activities which are deemed to be necessities.  Necessities are household and individual items or social activities which are considered to be necessary for a minimum acceptable standard of living in contemporary society.  

Changes in norms and average living standards mean that the items and activities which are considered to be necessary for a minimum acceptable standard of living also change over time.  For example, while most people are likely to consider that a reliable means of connecting to the internet at home is necessary today, this would not have been the case 20 or 30 years ago.  This means that necessities included in material deprivation measures need to be reviewed periodically.  

In December 2021 the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commissioned the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the LSE to conduct a review of the UK material deprivation measures.  The Review included assessing the need to update the necessities included in the UK measures for children, working age adults and pensioners and determining which items should be included in revised material deprivation measures.

To do this we conducted a literature review and qualitative research with a cross-section of people from across the UK.  This informed a set of test items which were included in the UK Family Resource Survey.  Analysis of these test items informed a set of recommendations on how the measures should be revised to reflect current perceptions on which items and activities are deemed to be necessary for a minimum acceptable standard of living in the UK today.  This information was combined with results from a series of statistical tests to identify the optimum combination of items and activities for children, working age adults and pensioners.

The Review recommended revising the UK material deprivation measures for children, working age adults and pensioners, along with improvements and standardisation in the methodology used to collect information on material deprivation in the Family Resources Survey.  Based on these recommended changes and before new estimates of material deprivation are published in Spring 2025, DWP will need to determine optimum poverty threshold(s), and whether or not to take on board recommendations made in the Review in relation to different approaches used to determine who is materially deprived, which headline series to publish in the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series and whether to conduct, or commission, further research on a whole population material deprivation measure.

Items and activities in the revised material deprivation measures for working-age adults, children and pensioners are shown in the table below.

The Review of UK Material Deprivation Measures was led by Abigail McKnight, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) and Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE, working in collaboration with CASE colleagues Irene Bucelli, Tania Burchardt and Eleni Karagiannaki. The Review summary and full report have been published by the Department for Work and Pensions and are available at the government website. 

The Review was presented in a launch event on 10 April 2024. You can find the video recording and the presentation on the event page.

CASE News
'CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE?' abrdn Financial Fairness Trust report co-authored by CASE's Eleni Karagiannaki

New abrdn Financial Fairness Trust report co-authored by Donald Hirsch and Eleni Karagiannaki examines the multiple pressures face by people in different parts of the income distribution, and in particular those in the middle of the distribution. It shows that middle income households face growing insecurity in work and housing.

For more details and discussion you can read the full report in this link. 

The report has received coverage in The Guardian. 

CASE News
Bulletin of World Health Organisation article co-authored by Jakob Dirksen

An article co-authored by CASE's Jakob Dirksen has been published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 

The article is examine inequalities in the coverage of reproductive and maternal health interventions in low- and middle-income countries and territories using a composite index of socioeconomic deprivation status.

You can read it in the link below:

'A composite index; socioeconomic deprivation and coverage of reproductive and maternal health interventions',  National Library of Medicine