“Housing Matters” was an ESRC-funded project examining the evolving association between housing and poverty since the global financial crisis. The project is a collaboration between myself, Dr Marco Pomati (also Cardiff University) and Prof. Mark Stephens (University of Glasgow). It commenced in October 2019 and concluded in March 2022.
This research examined how the relationship between housing conditions and costs and poverty outcomes in Europe has changed over the past decade. Despite the significance of housing for the study of poverty, debates in these two fields have occurred in ‘disjointed literatures’ in recent decades (Stephens and van Steen, 2011). This disjuncture is increasingly problematic because housing costs are rising and now threaten to become a key driver of poverty: a recent study has found that the risk of in-work poverty has risen by one-quarter in the UK between 2004/5 and 2014/15, with this increased risk concentrated almost entirely amongst tenants in the private rented and social rented sectors (Hick and Lanau, 2017; see also Stephens et al., 2014). However, recent studies have typically been solely focussed on the UK: it is less clear whether patterns observed here are distinctive or common amongst European countries.
The aim of this research project was to examine and explain the association between housing and poverty in a comparative European context, and how this has changed over the decade between 2005 and 2017. The project objectives were: (i) to analyse, using the most robust quantitative data available, the association between housing conditions and costs and poverty outcomes in Europe, and how these have changed over time; (ii) to contribute to theory-development in terms of explaining the evolving association between housing systems and poverty outcomes; (iii) to advance debates in both housing studies and poverty analysis by bringing together and integrating insights and debates from these two ‘disjointed’ fields; (iv) through focussed dissemination and knowledge exchange activities, inform policy and practice so as to contribute to poverty reduction in Europe.
This research project will consist of a secondary analysis of quantitative data from the EU Study on Income and Living Conditions to examine these issues. SILC includes information about housing conditions and costs, household incomes, poverty and living conditions and contains data from more than half a million respondents from across the EU28 in each wave.
Research Questions
1. How, if at all, have European housing systems changed over the last 10 years?
2. What is the association between housing deprivation and poverty, and how does this vary between countries over time?
3. What is the relationship between housing costs and poverty, and how does this vary over space and time?
4. To what extent does independence for young people vary between countries and over time, and how does this relate to their incidence of poverty?
Method and Research Design
This project concluded in April 2022 and the final project report can be found here.
We anticipate further outputs will be published in the months ahead. Please contact me if you would like more information about this work.