Projects
NPI Project areas for 2008
To read about our past areas of research, use the menu on the left.
The following list outlines the subjects we expect to be examining during 2008. It is primarily intended to help those who may be interested in working with us, in any capacity, over the year. It will be updated on a regular basis. The list is certainly not exclusive: if other things come along – as they always do – they won’t be rejected just because they are not on it.
Poverty and social exclusion
Poverty and social exclusion remain an area of central concern to NPI. With overall progress on child poverty stalled, our work in the next period will seek to understand why this is so – and whether what more can be, and in some places is already being, done. Topics currently slated for attention are:
- Poverty and social exclusion in Scotland: except for health, the big picture in Scotland differs little from England. Look more closely, though, and the effects of eight years of devolution must be showing through. So where are the differences – both in policy and their effects?
- In-work poverty: that half of all children in low income households have a family member in paid work is a dagger at the heart of a strategy that prioritises work as the route out of poverty. So why is this proportion still so high? Why, too, is the number of families who need tax credits to escape low income actually growing? And what can be done about it?
- Poverty and inequality: headline poverty can be interpreted as inequality in the lower half of the income distribution. But what about inequality in the upper half? What has happened there and how is it connected to low income?
Local and community information
I recent months, there seems to be a growing emphasis on the role of local organisations, both statutory and voluntary, in addressing a wide range of problems, including poverty but by no means restricted to it. This raises the question of what statistics there might be at the local or community level that could be used to measure what needs to be, or is, being done.
- Voluntary and community organisations’ use of data: if small, third sector organisations were better able to make use of official data, would that strengthen the work they do? If so, how could they be encouraged and enabled to do this? What do they need?
- Local indicators: Whitehall is pushing local authorities to measure progress on a wide range of subjects to do with poverty and exclusion. In many ways, that is good. But how reliable is the local data that is available, how should it be interpreted – and what are the pitfalls?
Young adults
The flip side of the political obsession with ‘children’ is the neglect of other groups: none more so we think than young adults, loosely defined as those 16+ (and no longer at school) to 25. Some of their problems fall under the poverty/exclusion heading, but the challenges faced in the transition from childhood to full adulthood independence go far wider than that. Our immediate aim is to promote understanding of what the challenges are and how they have changed.
- Young adults in rural areas: a preliminary report on the problems faced by young adults in rural areas will be published here at the start of 2008.
- Poverty and deprivation: almost 1½ million young adults live in low income households, which as a proportion is only slightly below that for children. What lies behind this and how far is it linked with poor educational qualifications, employment and health? Should this group be a focus for policy?
- Low pay and housing: low pay is widespread among young adults yet with few commitments and continued dependence, may be enough. But how many low paid young adults remain so in the late 20s and beyond? And will they progress sufficiently to acquire a home of their own?
Housing
The priority that it attaches to housing is one of the things that distinguishes the Brown government from the Blair one: both the availability of housing and its affordability are crucial issues. Yet what is striking about housing is how little agreement there actually is about even the basic facts, never mind the analysis of what lies behind them, where they are going and what could be done.
- Housing affordability: despite recent house price falls, more than a million homes face higher mortgages in 2008 as fixed rate deals come to an end; meanwhile, some housing experts believe that the long term trend in house prices is firmly upwards. What is happening to the cost of housing, both to own and to rent? Can anything really be done and if so what, both in the short term and the long?
Credit and debt
Since the summer, tens of billions of pounds of public money have been made available to ease the plight of the banks in general, and of Northern Rock in particular. The whole subject is usually presented as a technical exercise to be left to bankers, economists and regulators. But that really can’t be right because the deployment of such eye-watering sums is itself a profoundly value-laden decision.
- Impact of the credit crisis: beyond the risk of job losses in the North East, what is at stake for individuals? Can painful adjustments be avoided – or only postponed? Isn’t the choice of which particular ‘technical’ measures to adopt also a decision about who (e.g. savers, borrowers, tax payers) will lose out?
- Personal debt: personal debt now stands at record
levels, and organisations such as Citizens Advice report increasing
numbers of people struggling with problem debts of all kinds. Who is
at risk – and of what? Who is to blame? Should debtors be helped (and
if so how) – or left to face the consequences of their past decisions?