worklessness

Employment key to social mobility

Research demonstrates a negative relationship between worklessness and outcomes for children over and above what would be expected due to other factors, such as material deprivation and low income. This underlines the importance of supporting parents to move into the labour market.

This briefing looks at the importance of employment to social mobility.

Housing providers’ approaches to tackling worklessness: assessing value and impact

Report that captures the range of activities that housing providers are involved in to help residents into work. The report highlights particular approaches and projects that seem to be working and suggests ways in which housing providers could enhance their impact.

The report reflects on housing providers’ current approaches to tackling worklessness in order to provide recommendations to the government, welfare to work contractors, and the housing sector itself.

Employment status and health: understanding the health of the economically inactive population in Scotland

Although the association between health and unemployment has been well examined, less attention has been paid to the health of the economically inactive (EI) population. Scotland has one of the worst health records compared to any Western European country and the EI population account for 23% of the working age population.

The aim of this study is to investigate and compare the health outcomes and behaviours of the employed, unemployed and the EI populations (further subdivided into the permanently sick, looking after home and family [LAHF] and others) in Scotland.

Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Northern Ireland 2012

Report that looks at what has changed in the two-and-a-half years since the last report in 2009. It examines low income, work, benefits and education. What emerges is a complex picture. There has been continued long-term improvement in some areas and persistent problems in others.

There are variations both between and within geographical areas and population groups. In all of this, there is the sense that while the position is no worse than three years ago,it is also no better, and Northern Ireland is now faced by the uncertainties of public sector cuts and welfare reform.

Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2011

This report comes at a time when the UK government has outlined its main policy intentions and its strategy to reduce poverty. Although the statistics presented in this report still almost entirely reflect the policies of the previous government, the Labour record is the Coalition inheritance.

This commentary discusses the implications of that record for the current government in the light of its commitments on child poverty and social mobility set out in strategy documents published in 2011.

Understanding the worklessness dynamics and characteristics of deprived areas

The analysis in this report breaks new ground in using individual-level data on employment transitions and geographical movements to try to shed light on some unanswered questions about the dynamics of worklessness in deprived areas.

The individual-level dynamics operating in persistently deprived neighbourhoods in Great Britain are examined. The research is motivated by the need to better understand the dynamics and characteristics of deprived areas in order to support evidence-based policy responses.