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Alarming new research suggests that social housing is bad for our children’s prospects, writes Tim Leunig
Evidence is the best basis for policy-making, and this summer saw the launch of another fact-filled report. Sponsored by the Tenant Service Authority, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Scottish Government, Growing up in social housing in Britain: a profile of four generations 1946 to the present day is an excellent piece of work. On four occasions since the war, the British government has undertaken big cohort studies. Put simply, you take everyone born in a particular week - around 17,000 people - and follow them through their lives. We have studies of people born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000. So far, the first group have been surveyed 21 times, with the others eight, seven and three times respectively. We know a lot about these people!
The authors, led by the London School of Economics’ Ruth Lupton and Becky Tunstall, are serious people. They respect data and they are no right-wing patsies: it was Ms Lupton who took Michael Gove to task last year for his misleading statistics, when he claimed educational inequality had increased under Labour.
Their report finds that for those born in 1946, growing up in council housing is associated with worse health, well-being, education and employment outcomes. The authors show that this is not a ‘council housing effect’, but rather is caused by differences in family backgrounds. Children who are likely to have poor life outcomes are more likely to live in council housing, and council housing per se does not lead to worse life outcomes. ‘Phew’, I hear you say, ‘thank heavens for that’.
Unfortunately, the authors find that for people born in 1958 and even more for people born in 1970, living even for a short while in social housing as a child is associated with worse adult outcomes even after taking into account the child’s background, with the results strongest for women.
Let us be clear here, when we say that the authors take into account the child’s background, we don’t just mean parental income or some crude measure. These cohort studies allow them to take into account 66 and 56 different background characteristics for the 1958 and 1970 cohorts respectively, including parents’ education, their interest in their children’s education, whether the child wet the bed, whether the child described themselves as happy, the characteristics of their schools, their height, their weight, the number of siblings and birth order and so on.
Equally, the cohort study allowed the authors to look at a wide range of outcomes, including the person’s judgement of their own health status, whether they are depressed, whether they smoke, their declared life satisfaction ratings, and self-efficacy, their employment rates and whether they are on means-tested benefits, their qualifications, and whether they have literacy or numeracy problems.
As the report concludes, even when you take everything and the kitchen sink into account, the statistics are clear: growing up in social housing if you were born in 1958 and even more so if you were born in 1970 is associated with worse outcomes on each and every outcome measure listed above. This is true across all regions of Britain, irrespective of housing types and quality, irrespective of neighbourhood conditions and remains the case even when you restrict the analysis to social classes commonly found in social housing. There is not a single measure on which children growing up in social housing do better. As Ms Lupton said at a seminar to launch the report, ‘There is no positive story here for social housing.’
Of course, and as the authors are quick to point out, statistics assess correlation, not causation. But until British policy makers allocate otherwise identical families to different tenures in sufficient quantities to generate statistically significant randomised samples, correlation is all we have. And as Professor John Hills remarked, once you have taken this many things into account, and once you get results that are this consistent and this robust, you have to think that maybe you have found the answer. And that answer, sadly, is that social housing is bad for our children’s prospects.
Inevitably, readers will write in with examples of children they know whose lives have been transformed by social housing. But these are the exception, not the rule: the report shows that, taken as a whole, social housing makes it more likely that they will have less fulfilling lives than children whose families are identical in every way except that they did not live in social housing.
As ever, more research would be useful. It would be good to have more explicit comparisons with those in private rented accommodation. This is hard, since not that many children born in 1958 or 1970 lived in private rented accommodation, and many who did also lived in the social rented sector. But it remains a research priority since the private rented sector and not owner-occupation is the obvious practical alternative to social housing.
But notwithstanding an academic’s wish to see more research, we need to think of the policy implications. For those in the sector, this report makes for dreadful reading. And if I were a government minister, I would want to know why we have £500 billion worth of state- and quasi-state-owned housing that reduces people’s life chances.
When politicians talk about the environment they often talk of the precautionary principle: the evidence is not conclusive, but strongly suggestive, and that is sufficient to warrant action. The evidence in this report is not conclusive, but it is strongly suggestive. Apply the precautionary principle here and the right policy would be to keep children out of social housing at almost any cost.
Dr Tim Leunig is an academic in the department of economic history at the London School of Economics
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Readers' comments (8)
Dave Hollins | 10/08/2009 12:43 pm
Well the barmy boffin is at it again. Not only did he infuriate most of Liverpool with his ludicrous report for the far right Policy Exchange, arguing that millions of homes should be built in the south east so that people from Liverpool could abandon their city to move there, now he takes a well-researched report and distorts its conclusions in the most obnoxious way, simply to feed his hatred of social housing. Hoping that the Goebbles principle applies - ie the bigger the lie the more likely people are to believe it - people like Leunig and Greenhalgh from Hammersmith seem to think that the more often they say social housing causes poverty the more likely the country will accept the real Tory policies of ending security of tenure, market rents and breaking up established communities simply because they are social housing. Beware - these people could be running the country in a year's time!
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Brian Capaloff | 11/08/2009 11:41 am
This article, whilst being consistent in demonstrating the author's hatred of social housing, as mentioned by Dave Hollins, seems astounding in the complete lack of logic in its conclusion. It states 'Of course, and as the authors are quick to point out, statistics assess correlation, not causation.' Absolutely! No one can argue with this. Statistics do not in and of themselves demonstrate causality and surely only those with an axe to grind would suggest otherwise and would use those statistics in the best 'red top' kind of way, to imply that one inevitably results from the other, eh Mr Leunig?! But then we get 'social housing is bad for our children’s prospects.' Where is the proof of such a bold statement in the article preceding and the research which led to the article?
Professor John Hill states that we 'have to think'! I'm sorry, but to make such definitive statements as made by Mr Leunig, which may have major and potentially detrimental impacts upon UK social policy I don't believe thinking should come into it. Knowing is what is required.
When referring to the numerous factors assessed by the researchers where is the weighting regarding the relative impact upon each household of each individual factor?
Is social housing bad perse? Is unemployment a factor? Poverty of any type? Overcrowding? Poor schooling? Etc. Nothing within the article whatsoever justifies the statement that social housing is bad for our children's prospects - correlation is not cause!
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Lynne Murray | 13/08/2009 2:29 pm
Like the previous commentators on Mr Leunig's article I am astounded that he leaps from correlation to causation without even pausing for breath. Of course succeeding cohorts of social housing tenants demonstrate worse adult outcomes: whilst those living in post war council housing were amongst the lower paid, they were not universally poor whereas since the 70s in particular, the majority of tenants occupying social housing have been allocated housing because they are either poor or vulnerable in some other way. In some areas of London for example, the number of tenants on HB exceeds 70%. The real issue is poverty, which is systematically associated with poor adult outcomes and whilst social housing in itself does little to alleviate poverty, and putting lots of poor people together doesn't help, it is not the cause of poverty. Sadly, neither will simply living in the private rented sector cure it: one would wish it were that simple.
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Tim Leunig | 14/08/2009 6:24 pm
Can I clarify a couple of things? Lynne Murray says that of course SH tenants did worse, because those occupying social housing are either poor or vulnerable. But the point about this research is that it takes into account people's characteristics, and finds that even when you take all of the characteristics for which data exist, a person living in social housing as a child does worse on a huge range of measures than a person who has otherwise identical characteristics and does not live in social housing as a child. As far as the researchers can tell, the difference cannot be explained by overcrowding, or by neighbourhood effects. The figures suggest that it is social housing per se.
Clearly in an ideal world we would "know" the answer. But in social sciences we can never "know" the answer - how can we? All we have are correlations, and we have to take those correlations seriously.
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Brian Capaloff | 17/08/2009 9:39 am
Mr Leunig continues to be disingenuous beyond belief in using a piece of research which goes out of its way in endeavouring not to have social housing in the particular dock in which he so obviously wishes it to appear.
'When we compare outcomes between families moving in and out of social housing in childhood, we find the 'in' group to have worse longer term outcomes than the 'out', suggesting that the circumstances in which people enter a particular tenure may be as improtant as their experience of the tenure itself'. This is but one of many such qualifications which lead to the conclusion, with regard to tenure-based interventions that 'they certainly provide no justification for them'. The figures do not, according to this document, 'suggest that it is social housing per se'! Please get over it!!
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ILAG | 17/08/2009 11:48 pm
Tim - as you know, this site is chock-full-o-lefties most of which derive their living from the current "system" of social housing. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, as they say. Anybody who challenges the accepted "wisdom" (such as it is) of whether social housing should actually exist any more is shouted down as a heretic. This is entirely understandable as jobs/beliefs are on the line. The lefties just don't like hearing it. This will not change irrespective of the evidence or the amount of research presented. People don't change their views. They just die. Thank God they do otherwise we would all still believe the earth was flat. And that social housing is somehow, and in some way, a really good idea....
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john souray | 18/08/2009 9:15 am
Quote: "...this site is chock-full-o-lefties most of which derive their living from the current "system" of social housing. "
Well, seeing as this is Inside Housing (subtitle: "News, views and jobs in social housing" - look up at the top of the page), perhaps that isn't such a stunningly perceptive insight as you imagine.
It's a bit like going to the Gramophone and complaining that it's full of music-lovers.
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Brian Capaloff | 18/08/2009 11:08 am
Dear ILAG - whether left, right, centre, or completely non-committal, before having a completely irrational rant against those with whom you purport to disagree (whilst actually having no real knowledge about them and their views), I suggest you read the report Mr Leunig uses as a vehicle for his own particular prejudices. You will then see that the conclusion he draws is his alone and, although he claims them to be one and the same, not the conclusion contained within the report. This is the basis of my criticism, and however much you may allow prejudice to cloud your own particular views, there is absolutely no denying that this particular concern is correct and Mr Leunig bases an article on a non-existent summary, with the report writers pleading that such conclusions are not drawn from their work.
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