Authors:
Sharon Collard, Professor of Personal Finance, University of Bristol
Jamie Evans, Senior Research Associate, Personal Finance Research Centre, University of Bristol

Even before the current cost of living crisis, disabled people were much more likely than non-disabled people to be in poverty and living on inadequate incomes. Now, spiralling living costs are adding to years of financial disadvantage. Our new analysis of YouGov survey data starkly illustrates the situation, showing that three in ten disabled households are in serious financial difficulty.

The UK government has announced several measures that will provide some relief for many, including an energy price freeze and payments totalling £650 for people on means-tested benefits. All households will also receive a £400 reduction in energy bills via instalments spread over six months, and 8 million pensioner households are receiving a separate one-off payment of £300.

Disabled people who receive benefits that aren’t based on income (non-means-tested) will also get a one-off cost of living payment of £150. But while these measures are welcome, this amount is a fraction compared to the additional costs disabled people typically have to cover.

Disabled households often need to spend more on essentials like heating and insurance, as well as necessary equipment, therapies and support. In 2019, disability charity Scope estimated that disabled people in the UK face extra costs of £583 per month, on average. For one fifth of disabled people, this “disability price tag” was over £1,000.

Source: Pixabay

Rising energy costs are particularly impacting households that need to run vital equipment. Wheelchairs, feeding and suction pumps, or ceiling hoists all need to be constantly charged. Some people may also need additional heating to stay warm to prevent pain or seizures.

Considering these already higher costs, it should not come as a surprise that disabled households are disproportionately cutting back or doing without compared with other households. We found that four in ten have cut back on overall spending in 2022, and half have already struggled to keep their home warm this year. Similar proportions have reported reducing their use of the cooker and shower.

Around one in ten non-disabled households report that rising costs mean they are eating fewer meals. This rises to three in ten among disabled households. A survey conducted by the charity Family Fund found that half of carers looking after disabled children have skipped meals in the last year. We increasingly hear about “choosing between heating and eating”, but there are concerning reports of some being forced to choose between heating and medication.

Many disabled households are already at a breaking point, even before we enter a more costly winter. There is nothing else these families can cut back on. The situation is so dire for some that for the first time in its history, the deaf-blind and complex impairments charity Sense is giving cost of living grants of £500 directly to families.

When work and benefits aren’t enough

Soaring inflation means that disabled people in employment are experiencing the same real terms fall in wages as the rest of the working-age population. Around half of working-age disabled people are in work, but many others are excluded from participating in the labour market.

There is a large gap between the rate of disabled and non-disabled people in employment, for many reasons including structural and discriminatory barriers. Disabled people are also underemployed due to the quality of jobs on offer to them, forced to take lower-skilled or lower-paid roles offering fewer or infrequent hours.

Across all UK households in serious financial difficulty, disabled households are much more likely to have no earners than their non-disabled counterparts. But with a quarter of disabled households who have two full-time workers currently in serious financial difficulty, work is by no means a guarantee of avoiding hardship. In-work poverty disproportionately affects disabled people.

Disabled people are more likely to engage with the social security system. This is partly due to their lower employment rate, but also because there are benefits available to assist with the higher cost of living with a disability. State benefits for disabled people rose by 3.1% in April.

But, as is the case with earned income, rising inflation means that benefits are shrinking in real terms. For disabled households, this means substantial monthly financial losses.

Families with a disabled adult were among the hardest hit groups from changes to the social security system in the 2010s, with the inadequacy of provision for disabled people attracting widespread criticism. The process of applying for disability benefits has been described by disability campaigners and charities as complicated and inhumane.

For lower-income disabled households, these new cost of living payments will be insufficient or at best, a short-term solution to longstanding financial inequalities. These disadvantages are more widely corrosive, driving social exclusion, limiting agency and choice, and ultimately impacting people’s mental health and wellbeing.

To meet the scale of the crisis faced by disabled households, longer-term solutions – such as proposals for a decent social security system – are certainly needed if we are to avoid a further decline in living standards.

Sharon Collard, Professor of Personal Finance, University of Bristol and Jamie Evans, Senior Research Associate, Personal Finance Research Centre, University of Bristol.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. It was also previously re-blogged by PolicyBristol Hub.

Author: Sara Davies, Senior Research Fellow, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol

As the UK faces the sharpest increase in the cost of living in a generation, households across the country are feeling the pinch. Those already on low incomes are affected most, not just because they have less money to begin with, but also because they actually pay more to access essential goods and services than anyone else.

Known as the “poverty premium”, it is essentially an extra cost of being poor. Much of this premium is driven by systems which effectively penalise low-income households for not being able to afford more economical ways of paying for everyday necessities.

I recently led a University of Bristol investigation, funded by the charity Fair by Design, which revealed that where people live has a significant effect on the extent of the premiums they incur. In the poorest areas of the UK, families pay up to £541 a year more than affluent families to access the same basic essentials.

Here are four things that can cost more if you’re already poor:

1. Spreading costs

Some household costs come with a choice of paying the full amount up front, or spreading the total over the course of a year. This can apply to anything from insurance to a mobile phone or a fridge. But the “choice” usually involves paying extra if you don’t pay in full. Faced with an unaffordable upfront payment, households without the means will naturally end up paying extra if they need to spread the cost.

Other bills are cheaper if you pay by direct debit. But if a household’s income fluctuates due to insecure work, then paying when you get the bill is the financially responsible, but more expensive, method.

In other words, poorer customers are given the illusion of consumer choice, when really there is only one option available.

2. Prepayment meters

Using pre-payment meters for gas and electricity, which have to be constantly topped up, typically costs households using them £131 a year more than paying by direct debit. This is because the standing charge is higher for pre-payment meters than other meters, although it is hard to see what the extra cost covers.

For our work we looked at one of the most deprived areas in the UK, where more than 11,000 households rely on electricity pre-payment meters, taking more than £730,000 a year out of the pockets of people in that community.

Certain groups are disproportionately exposed to this aspect of the poverty premium, including people with disabilities and those who are housebound. As energy bills hit record highs it’s the poorest households and most vulnerable who are already facing the worst consequences, with increasing numbers being pulled into fuel poverty.

When energy prices soared in April 2022, there were warnings that record numbers of pre-payment meter customers were “self-disconnecting” by not topping up their meters.

3. Higher insurance premiums

We found that low-income households often pay much more for home or car insurance because of where they live, or rather, where they can afford to live. Insurers factor in a perceived risk to vehicles and property, depending on the neighbourhood.

With motor insurance for example, taking the same profile of person and vehicle, the extra cost for insurance in a deprived area rose sharply from £74 on average in 2016 to £298 in 2019. Households in deprived rural areas where car ownership is a necessity are even more vulnerable to this premium than areas of higher deprivation in cities.

While our work suggests that the poverty premium for home insurance is less, unlike car insurance it is not a legal requirement. The UK’s financial regulator has warned that the cost of living crisis could force people to cancel or cut back on insurance costs, with potentially ruinous consequences – and if the worst happened low-income households would be unlikely to have the means to replace essential items.

4. Financial services

The poverty premium can even be seen in the very act of accessing money, through paying to withdraw cash from fee-charging cash machines or through higher-interest loans and credit cards. It is estimated that around 1,700 cash machines in the UK switched from being free to charging a fee at the start of 2019. These changes were more common in deprived areas.

Since 2014, major regulation has dramatically changed the consumer credit landscape in the UK, with the number of high-cost, short-term lenders falling by almost one-third between 2016 and 2020. This has led to a recent surge in pawnbroking, where people use use items they own (such as jewellery) as collateral for short-term loans. With consumer borrowing rising sharply, there is a clear a need for access to affordable credit by low-income households to manage low or unstable incomes.

These four aspects of the poverty premium can be hugely damaging to already precarious household incomes. But they are entirely fixable.

The UK charity Fair By Design, for example, which campaigns to end the poverty premium, suggests various measures. These could include the UK’s financial regulator stepping in to stop the insurers charging extra for “non-standard” billing methods, and introducing a price cap on all forms of credit. It also recommends that the energy regulator should prevent companies charging customers more for not paying by direct debit.

Elsewhere there have been calls for changes to charges for different kinds of payment

With more households choosing between heating, eating or meeting essential costs, the need for action has never been more pressing. As the temporary £20 Universal Credit uplift showed, small sums can make a big difference to people on low incomes. Relatively simple actions by industry, government and regulators could significantly reduce these premiums, and make a huge difference to millions of lives.

Sara Davies, Senior Research Fellow, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Author: Olivia Farrell, Sport, Exercise and Health (SEH-comms@bristol.ac.uk)

Partnership with JogOn 

The University of Bristol’s Sport, Exercise and Health (SEH) team recently launched a partnership with JogOn, an organisation aiming to remove 1 million running shoes from landfill. According to experts, running shoes can take 1000 years to break down in landfill, and many are marketed as only lasting for a few hundred miles. Instead, JogOn redistributes these to people who can benefit from them.

As part of this sustainable initiative, SEH are providing collection points for people to deposit their old shoes across three University sport facilities. All you need to do is tie the pair of shoes together using the shoelaces and drop them into the boxes for collection.

 

Where do the shoes go?

• Some go to charities (e.g. UK based refugee charities)
• Some to NGOs (targeting poor foot health as a factor in other issues)
• Some go to 11 microeconomy hubs around the world – where local groups can resell in local economy
• End-of-life trainers will go for shredding to then be used in other things (pathways, play areas, etc.) – out of the 2000 pairs they have collected, fewer than 12 were unusable for anything else

 

Where are the collection points?

• Indoor Sports Centre
• Coombe Dingle Sports Complex
• Richmond Building Pool

 

Bristol Run Series 

Good physical and mental health means knowing what works best for you and building healthy habits into your life. Physical exercise is a proven way to release endorphins and boost your wellbeing.

The Bristol Run Series offers our staff, students and alumni a fun, accessible and affordable way to get into running as part of a community.  Plus, as part of the Run Series, University staff, students and alumni can get discounted entry to the Great Bristol Run on 25 September – sign up here for staff discount. This is also a great opportunity to raise money for a good cause – perhaps one which tackles poverty and inequality – through sponsorship. Last year the Run Series raised over £1800 for their selected charities Healthy Minds and NHS Charities Together, and participants are also welcome to fundraise for a charity of their choice.

 

For more information, please email: SEH-comms@bristol.ac.uk

 

Introduction

On the afternoon of Thursday 30th June 2022, the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) brought together friends, colleagues and associates from a range of organisations to showcase, celebrate and explore poverty-relevant research at the University of Bristol and beyond at a Showcase Event held at the Bristol Hotel in central Bristol. This event explored a range of topics including global poverty, the cost-of-living-crisis, decolonising development, multidimensional poverty, (il)licit livelihoods and drugs policies, and social, digital and cultural lives of minoritized older adults. It also highlighted research taking place in a wide range of geographical contexts, from local analyses in Bristol to projects in Somali/Somaliland and Bangladesh, a wider project across several African countries, and poverty on a global scale. The delegate pack – including speaker biographies and talk abstracts – is available on the BPI website, along with slide decks from the presentations and pdfs of the posters displayed at the Showcase.

The event began with an introductory talk from Professor Agnes Nairn, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of Management, providing a brief introduction to the University of Bristol and our strengths in poverty-relevant research. She also introduced the University’s new Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research, which she co-leads. Over the next five years this multidisciplinary Research Centre will seek to build greater understanding and evidence around the growing and diverse impact of gambling harms across Great Britain, drawing upon expertise from a wide range of academics across the University as well as local, national and international collaborators. Agnes provided an overview of the programme for the Showcase, and introduced our fantastic cohort of speakers.

Ending World Poverty

We then moved on to a presentation from the founder and Director of the Bristol Poverty Institute, Professor David Gordon, who gave a thought-provoking presentation on Ending World Poverty. David highlighted how evidenced-informed policies will be key to tackling worrying, and escalating, levels of poverty, particularly in the wake of the pandemic. He then shared some staggering statistics on the pandemic, including estimates that COVID has caused around 20million excess deaths and significantly damaged both national and global economies and disproportionally impacted those in poverty. David warned that all of the gains that have been made to tackle extreme poverty in recent decades will have been reversed if current trends continue, noting how pandemics have always done greater harm to the poor and vulnerable. For example, food insecurity in the UK has now doubled since 2018 and is continuing to increase rapidly, and 1 in 5 children are now living in households where people are going hungry. He then went on to outline the ‘Bristol method’ of measuring poverty through multidimensional analysis, highlighting that we will need to better understand the extent and nature of poverty in each country to inform effective policy. He emphasised how poverty is caused primarily by structural factors not by individual behaviour, and ended with a quote from Thomas Paine from 1791 which outlined what we ought to seek to achieve through effective policy and practice.

The slides from this presentation are available via this link.

 

Posters

David’s presentation was followed by a break, where participants were encouraged to engage with the three posters which were on display in the refreshments space:

• A ‘Poverty-free Model Village’- A pilot project addressing multidimensional poverty in rural Bangladesh, Dr Rabeya Khatoon, Khalil Ahmed, Md. Mizanur Rahman, Md. Shafiqur Rashid, Asim Kumar Sarker and Fatema Ruhee
• (Il)licit livelihoods in Africa: Drug policy and reproduction of poverty, Dr Lala Ireland, Dr Clemence Rusenga and Dr Gernot Klantschnig
• Researching with communities at the margins: Exploring lived experiences of social, digital and cultural participation with minoritized older adults, Dr Helen Manchester, Prof. Kirsten Cater, Dr Tot Foster, Dr Paul Clarke, Dr Kirsty Sedgman, Dr Tim Senior, Dr Stuart Gray and Dr Alice Willatt

A pdf of each poster is available to view on the BPI website.

 

Tackling the cost of living crisis for low-income UK households

Following the break we recommenced with a joint presentation on the cost of living crisis and the ‘poverty premium’ from Ms Sara Davies and Mr Jamie Evans, who are researchers based in the Personal Finance Research Centre in the School for Geographical Sciences. Jamie kicked things off, highlighting how the number of households in serious difficulties has increased significantly in the last year or so, with over half of households reporting that their finances are worse than they were pre-pandemic. He reported that some groups are more effected than others, with groups such as low-income earners, social renters, single parents, household with disabled person(s) and larger families all more affected than others. Jamie then went on to introduce the key concept of the ‘poverty premium’, whereby the poor are effectively paying more for essential services including food and utilities.

This led onto Sara’s portion of the presentation, which delved into the poverty premium in more detail. She highlighted how many of the suggested solutions to tackling the cost of living crisis weren’t necessarily appropriate for those in poverty. For example, the advice to “shop around” is not practical for those reliant on public transport or accessing supermarkets by foot, and they also do not have the financial flexibility to buy in bulk to save money overall. Sara noted how the market is also penalising people for making the choices which are necessary for them, such as choosing to ‘pay upon receipt’ for their utility bills rather than setting up a direct debit, or taking out payday loans or a high-interest credit card to cover immediate costs. She therefore highlighted how structural circumstances has a bigger impact than choice, and indeed how people do not always have access to that choice anyway. For example, pre-payment meters for electricity, which are more common in lower income homes, are actually more expensive with a higher standing charge than other electricity meters, so even with minimal use bills can be unaffordable. Sara therefore summarised that the poverty premium represents a mismatch between the needs and circumstances of low-income households and the markets that serve them. She additionally highlighted how there are big regional differences in how poverty premiums are incurred, which in many ways reflects the geographical distribution of poverty. Examples included the fact that fee-paying ATMs are more common in poorer areas than wealthier ones, and the fact that car insurance premiums tend to be higher in deprived rural areas. and She therefore concluded by sharing her hope that there would be impetus and opportunity through the government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda to address some of these inequalities.

The slides from this presentation are available via this link.

 

Decolonising Development: Academics, Practitioners and Collaboration

The final presentation came from Professor Eric Herring, a Professor of World Politics in the School for Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS). This talk was entitled Decolonising Development and explored how academics and practitioners around the world can collaborate in an equitable way, identifying and challenges some of the colonial legacies in development research. Eric framed this talk in the context of his own journey into collaborative work with partners in Somali and Somaliland, which are effectively separate entities but technically one country and is therefore particularly complex. He highlighted how this is one of the poorest countries in the world which is currently experiencing an enormous humanitarian emergency, with around half of its population needing urgent assistance right now and high potential for widespread famine. Eric introduced how bow Somali and Somaliland are pioneers in ‘mobile money’, which has replaced formal banking in the region with even relatively poor people using mobile phones for their money management. He revealed that the global aid industry has, surprisingly, never engaged with these companies despite their great success, not only persisting through challenging times including civil war and operating effectively in a complex clan-based society, but also managing to be an equal opportunities employer. Eric has therefore been trying to connect the companies and local researchers who work with them with people who may learn from them, but has encountered several challenges along the way. This includes, for example, the fact that many academics in Somali/Somaliland do not have PhDs or publish in peer-reviewed journals, and are therefore not seen as an appealing partner for international academics and they cannot compete with ‘powerhouse’ institutions in neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Uganda. Additional challenges include the insecurity of the region, the fact they are experiencing an extreme humanitarian emergency, huge rates of illiteracy, and a university system with next to no research capacity. He therefore highlighted how decolonising processes therefore requires a deep understand of the context and how to operate there. He went on to provide a case study from his own work with Somali First – a  joint initiative between Somali social enterprise Transparency Solutions and the University of Bristol – which promotes Somali-led development. He expressed gratitude to the University of Bristol for being willing to take a risk and get behind this initiative from the early stages and agreeing to a formalised strategic partnership. Eric concluded by highlighting the fact that practices and perceptions from the colonial period are still embedded in a lot of development work – including in the use of colonial languages such as English in research – and that identifying colonial legacies and actually doing things differently will be key to achieving positive change with a renewed focus on co-production.

The slides from this presentation are available via this link.

Closing remarks

The Bristol Poverty Institute Showcase was brought to completion with closing remarks from the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise Professor Phil Taylor. He provided a summary of the talks and posters presented at the Showcase, and also reflected on some other topical issues around poverty in his own field. In particular, he noted that there are an estimated 6.5million people in the UK currently in fuel poverty, and with the upcoming further price cap rise in the autumn this is only going to get worse. Phil therefore outlined ambitions to work with the Bristol Poverty Institute and external partners on tackling issues at the nexus between health, climate change and fuel poverty. In closing the event Phil thanked the speakers, poster authors, organisers and attendees for their fantastic contributions to the showcase event, and encouraged everyone to stick around and continue the conversation at the drinks reception.

 

 

Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in our first in-person event in over two years – we hope you enjoyed it, and that we get to meet again soon!

The presentation slides, speaker biographies and abstracts, and pdfs of the posters are all available on the BPI website.

The University of Bristol supports all its staff to take one day of volunteering leave per year to help make a positive impact in the local community. This December the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) brought together teams of staff from across the University to volunteer at a local food bank in the run up to Christmas, helping out a good cause and having a really rewarding, enjoyable day with colleagues in the process.

The BPI team are acutely aware of how many people now unfortunately have to rely on food banks, particularly with recent changes to Universal Credit, the impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods, and rising fuel prices, and we therefore felt that this was a good opportunity to help make a contribution. The food bank also offered flexibility in terms of timings (for example, if someone needed to leave early due to caring responsibilities), as well as disabled parking, access and toilet facilities, therefore making it an accessible and inclusive option for us.

We wanted these volunteering days to also be an opportunity for members of the BPI community to get to know one another, and to mix with colleagues who have a shared ethos but whose paths may not ordinarily cross. We were delighted to bring together 17 volunteers representing academia, Research and Enterprise Division (RED), the University Research Institutes (URIs), and Policy Press across three volunteering days in December, although unfortunately one date was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

The volunteering days themselves were fantastic; the staff at the food bank were so welcoming, friendly, and helpful, and the work was really rewarding. Our primary task was to sort through mountains of donations, writing expiry dates on everything so the warehouse team could distribute them in date order to minimise waste. We were also tasked with pulling out and sorting all the Christmas goodies (including more custard than you could ever imagine!) ready for handing out in the coming days and weeks to make the festive season a little brighter. It was wonderful to see how much people had given, but at the same time humbling to see how much was needed and to be reminded of how much we take for granted. The fact we were only there for a day meant we could only make a small contribution to such a mammoth endeavour, but everyone involved found it so rewarding to see the stacks of crates being wheeled into the warehouse at the end of the day as a result of our hard work.

 

We’re really looking forward to going back, hopefully this time next year, and all came away with a renewed drive to be more mindful about popping something in the food bank donation boxes every time we go to the supermarket or making a monetary donation when we can, as well as contributing to knowledge and trying to influence policy that may help to reduce the need for food banks in the future. Most supermarkets have donation boxes near the checkout, and many of them include a list of recommended/requested items. You can also find lists on food bank websites of the types of items they most frequently need (see the Trussell Trust website, for example), with lists of non-food items such as sanitary products, nappies, laundry detergent and toiletries alongside regular food items including:

• Cereal
• Soup
• Pasta
• Rice
• Tinned tomatoes
• Pasta sauce
• Lentils, beans and pulses
• Tinned meat
• Tinned vegetables
• Tea/coffee
• Tinned fruit
• Biscuits
• UHT milk
• Fruit juice

This was the second time the BPI have organised volunteering days. In 2019 a team of academics and professional services staff came together for a great day working at the Hartcliffe Community Farm in South Bristol association with the Matthew Tree Project, which provides support for people on the verge of homelessness and crisis. This includes both opportunities for members of the community to learn about growing food and to benefit from the fruits (and vegetables!) of their labour, quite literally. It was a really enjoyable, but tiring, day, with activities including digging out rubble to clear new spaces for vegetable beds, planting out new seedlings, and laying a bark chip path to help people to move around the site and access different parts of the farm more easily. Check out our news story for more details.

We hope to be able to run more volunteering days in 2022, subject to restrictions. We are hoping to do one outdoors activity in the summertime, and another food bank activity in the lead up to Christmas. If you want to be kept in the loop of plans and activities, please sign up to the BPI mailing list by emailing bristol-poverty-institute@bristol.ac.uk.

This blog was written by Dr Tigist Grieve, Senior Research Associate in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol and Member of Bristol Poverty Institute’s (BPI) Advisory Board. It was posted earlier in the summer on the University’s International Development Research Group blog, and has been reproduced here with their kind permission.

The University of Bristol’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Law International Development Research Group was recently approached by the BBC for their views on the UK Aid cut. Professor Guy Howard, Global Research Chair Environmental and Infrastructure Resilience and BPI Advisory Board member, outlined how the impact of the reduction will be devastating for those most impoverished.

Funding cuts in the middle of a global pandemic, as the public sector is struggling and where health care provisions are stretched, is detrimental to those already most marginalised and at-risk including girls and women in low income countries. Despite the renewed commitment from the UK at the 2019 International Conference on Population and Development in Nairobi – the ICPD25 Nairobi Summit – the withdrawal of funding to organisations such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) halts the progress made so far in advancing the rights and dignity of women and girls globally.

The University of Bristol (UoB) is a founding member of the UNFPA’s University Network, TransformU, and UoB’s researchers and its Perivoli Africa Research Centre were at the UK “On the Road to Nairobi UNFPA ICPD25” Parliamentary Reception hosted by Baroness Sugg CBE at the House of Lords. UoB’s researchers subsequently shared their work on sexual and reproductive health and rights at the Nairobi summit as well as at a “Translating commitments to actions” side event at the Aga Khan University.

The ICPD25 Summit catalysed significant economic and political commitment to build on the progress made since the inaugural ICPD Summit in Cairo to help accelerate the UNFPA’s “3 Zeroes Agenda“. While many areas are affected by the UKAid cuts, the significant drop in funding to the UNFPA and others will pose a serious challenge in translating these important commitments into action.

 

 

 

You can read Professor Guy Howard’s interview with BBC Newsbeat as part of the following article ‘UK foreign aid cut: Where does it go and what is it used for?‘. Professor Howard is co-lead of UoB’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Law International Development Research Group, interim Director of the Cabot Institute for the Environment, and a member of the BPI Advisory Board.

This blog was written by the authors of the Unequal Pandemic: Clare Bambra (Professor of Public Health, Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University); Katherine Smith (Professor of Public Health Policy at University of Strathclyde); and Julia Lynch (Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania). It was originally posted on the blog Transforming Society and has been re-posted here with their kind permission. 

In 1931 Edgar Sydenstricker identified inequalities in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, reporting a significantly higher incidence among the working classes. This challenged the widely held popular, political and scientific consensus of the time that ‘the flu hit the rich and the poor alike’.

In the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, there have been parallel claims made by politicians and the media – that we are ‘all in it together’ and that the COVID-19 virus ‘does not discriminate’.

But we can dispel this emerging myth of COVID-19 as an ‘equality of opportunity’ disease, by showing how, just as 100 years ago, the pandemic is experienced unequally across society. COVID-19 and inequality are a syndemic – a perfect storm.

Our new book delves into international data and accounts, reaching the conclusion that the pandemic is unequal in four ways:

The pandemic kills unequally: COVID-19 deaths are twice as high in the most deprived neighbourhoods of England than in the most affluent, and infection rates are higher in the more deprived regions such as the north-east of England and in urban areas. There are also significant inequalities by ethnicity and race, with the mortality of ethnic minorities in the UK considerably higher than expected, and the death rates of black Americans in US cities such as Chicago far higher than for their white counterparts. This is because of the interaction of the pandemic with existing social, economic and health inequalities.

The pandemic is experienced unequally: the COVID-19 ‘lockdowns’ have resulted in a significant increase in social isolation and confinement within the home and immediate neighbourhood for an average of 10–12 weeks. The social and economic experiences of this lockdown are unequal, as lower-income workers are more likely to experience job and income loss, live in higher-risk urban and overcrowded environments, and have higher exposure to the virus by occupying key worker roles.

The pandemic impoverishes unequally: COVID-19 and the lockdowns have resulted in an unprecedented shock to the economy with widespread predictions of the worst recession for 300 years. This economic devastation will result in job losses, wage reductions, higher debt and more poverty, as well as increases in the ‘deaths of despair’. However, the social and geographical distribution of these economic impacts will be unequal – with low-income workers, women and ethnic minorities bearing the brunt.

These pandemic inequalities are political: the unequal impacts of COVID-19 were not inevitable – the pandemic was a predictable event and its unequal effects could have been mitigated or avoided through better preparation. The original inequalities leading to these unequal impacts were a result of prior political choices, and policy makers could have chosen to address the unequal impacts of the pandemic or not. Governments responded differently and those countries with higher rates of social inequality and less generous social security systems had a more unequal pandemic.

So, COVID-19 is a syndemic of infectious disease and inequalities. It has killed unequally, been experienced unequally and will impoverish unequally. These health inequalities, before, during and after the pandemic are a political choice – with governments effectively choosing who gets to live and who gets to die. Our book concludes by showing how we can learn from COVID-19 quickly to prevent inequality growing and to reduce health inequalities in the future.

Clare Bambra is Professor of Public Health, Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University.

Katherine Smith is Professor of Public Health Policy at University of Strathclyde.

Julia Lynch is Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania.

This post was originally written for the blog Transforming Society and has been re-posted here with their kind permission.

This blog post was coordinated by Dr Tebeje Molla (Deakin University, Australia) and Dr Tigist Grieve (University of Bristol, UK), with contributions from Prof Leon Tikly (University of Bristol, UK), Dr Emily (Markovich) Morris (American University, Washington D.C., USA),  Dr Arif Naveed (University of Bath, UK), and Mr Simon Ingram-Hill (former Country Director for the British Council in Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Hungary, Mauritius). All views expressed are those of the contributor(s) cited.

 

Introduction

As part of the Bristol Poverty Institute Conference, Poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals: From the Local to the Global (27-29 April 2021), an international group of scholars held a round-table discussion on education and poverty. The session was convened by Prof Leon Tikly and Dr Tigist Grieve. The panellists shared empirical findings and analytical reflections on the topic. However, we had limited time to answer questions posed by the chair Prof Leon Tikly at the end of the session. This short blog post therefore collates our responses to the questions. The video recording of the session along with some of our presenters’ slides can be found on the Bristol Poverty Institute website.

Visual Minutes of the Session (Credit: Bristol Poverty Institute, Jorge Martin Illustrator)

 

Discussion

Question 1: Tigist, how do we ensure the voices of rural girls are heard by policy makers?

Tigist: In answering this question, I am highlighting a piece of writing from my doctoral research. It has sections on voices and while it is a bit of a long response it captures my take on the issues of voice overall. In practice, it is notoriously difficult to get a hearing from policy makers even to the recommendations from senior scholars and established institutes let alone from girls. The possibility of getting voices of people living in rural areas heard and then taken seriously in the policy sphere is unattainable. In sum, I would say in the majority of cases where claims are made about ‘voices of the poor’ it is a proxy one. For further discussion and critical perspectives on this see (Chambers, 1997; Holland and Blackburn 1998; Boyden and Ennew 1997; Hart 2013; Morrow 2001) for example.

To begin with, there is limited direct link between the people in the policy sphere and academics engaged in research. Where there is direct link, there is a filtration of voices even within the academic sphere where those researchers on the ground perhaps with direct access to those voices are not the same as those who make the final call in the analysis, in how data is interpreted, what gets stripped away and what gets amplified. Further, the voices are diluted to fit academic style outputs, or policy briefs and so on.  Some established academics may get a hearing as government advisors and I am sure they do their best in maximising the opportunity to influence policy but that is a rare privilege and available for few. I don’t want us to misunderstand that I am arguing or expecting the voice to become policy rather I am saying a policy anchored on lived experience of people, responding to their concerns and that takes into account the impact of decisions e.g. the complex interplay between education, poverty and gender as we are speaking now will be impacted by decision for withdrawal of services, change in procedures and so on. For more about policy making please refer to the following publications:

• Globalizing Education Policy (Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard);
• Education Policy and Social Class (Stephen J. Ball).

Further, although community consultation can ideally be instrumental in ensuring that the voices of girls are heard, structural issues including repressive gender culture means that it might be difficult to hold open and free discussion in rural communities (see Tebeje’s comments below).  Even when you are entrusted by communities and successfully consult, as anthropologists and ethnographers do, you may generate so much knowledge (data), but you know deep down the complexities of utilising that into policy that can genuinely transform their situations.

Moreover, I am aware despite the increasing popularity of voice in social research and development discourse there are many questions over its practical application and at times it remains a rhetorical device (Wells 2009:182; also see Komulainen 2007). Commitment to voice should not blind us to the importance also of going beyond the immediate social worlds of children to theorise how children’s everyday lives are shaped and reshaped through globalization as well as political and economic conditions (see relevant discussions for this in Abebe 2020, Boyden 1997, Hart 2008, Katz 2004, Komulainen 2007; and for education-related policy relevant discussions see Crossley 2001, Tikly & Barrett 2013).

Generally, there is limited evidence of where girls’ voices from rural context influence policy. Having said that, we must also acknowledge the mighty but small-scale work by genuinely engaged third sector organisations, communities themselves and activists. In this context it is possible to hear and act on the voices of girls in small ways but still transformative in changing practices on the ground. To sum up, as we seek to amplify voices or for this to be part of transformative agenda in relation to gender equity in education, I want to draw our attention to recent critical contributions on the topic and call for greater sensitivity to the way voices of (children, teachers, communities) are interpreted in scholarly and policy circles.

 

Question 2: Emily, how might the Zanzibarian government most effectively respond to drop out? Ought they to focus on in school or out of school factors primarily (e.g. labour markets)?

Emily: Governments (Zanzibar and beyond) can start using the term pushout, recognizing that the majority of young people do not leave on their own volition and start tracking why young people are leaving, as well as listening to youth narratives of push-out and pull-out (echoing Tigist’s research).

In the case of Zanzibar, school quality – when linked with geography and familial poverty – is a major contributor to youth being pushed out of school and therefore an integrated approach to improving school quality is needed (for example better teacher training, increased guidance and counselling, accessible tuition/tutoring in difficult subjects like English) to ensure youth are not pushed out as a consequence of failing the exams (I echo all of Arif’s points on quality, see below).

Also, governments need to recognise that the human capital theory has its limitations when there is a small formal economy and large inequities in income based on geography, gender, and other factors (linking to Arif’s work on rate of returns and his points above). While Zanzibari boys tend to associate education with economic ends, this is not always the case for girls who see intrinsic and extrinsic value to education beyond economic ends. Thus collaboration between Ministries of Labour, Social Welfare, Women, and Children are critical to ensuring that education is relevant to the aspirations of youth of all genders and geographies (linking to Tigist and Tebeje’s points). Looking at the curricula and how school is preparing youth for different futures is part of ensuring education is relevant, as well as ensuring that youth have the support needed to navigate the many barriers and obstacles they encounter while trying to achieve “the good life.”

 

Question 3: Tebeje, how might the Ethiopian government go about evaluating and prioritising the capability set for learners in Ethiopia?

Tebeje: Educational capability refers to people’s genuine options to be well educated. It is widely seen as a foundational capability that expands human freedom in other spheres of life.

Achieved educational outcomes are observable and easy to assess. Whereas educational capability sets may not be readily discernible, we can only access those through indirect means of assessment. To begin with, governments can evaluate and prioritise the capability sets of learners through two interrelated processes. First, to understand the substantiveness of opportunities of equity targets, one can start with assessing observable outcomes of the group. It is a backward process that proceeds from the outputs to inputs. The focus is on what genuine options people have to achieve alternative functionings. For instance, policymakers who are interested in addressing gender inequality in education may visit rural schools. A high level of gender inequality in those schools may force the visitors to ask about real options that girls in the area have to participate in education and training.

But such evaluative processes cannot provide a complete picture about substantiveness of educational opportunities and conversion abilities of individuals. For example, a backward evaluation does not tell us why two groups or individuals with similar educational capability sets might end up achieving different levels of outcomes. A young girl from illiterate farming families in rural Ethiopia and a boy from high-paid professional parents in Addis may have equal access to basic education (in terms of having a publicly funded school nearby) but they are surely not equally positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. Conversion abilities of the two students vastly vary. Hence, there is a need for a complementary process, namely public consultation. Broad-based community consultation enables governments to understand specific conditions and needs of equity target groups such as girls in rural areas, students with disability, and learners from historically marginalised ethnic groups. Clarity on those issues, in turn, makes it possible for policymakers to ensure that educational opportunities are adequate, relevant, and convertible.

Still, public consultation is not without limitations. The notion of public reasoning presupposes a democratic political culture where people freely and reflectively express their wishes. In reality, as Sen notes, “the way people read the world in which they live” can be obscured by relational and structural factors around them. Hence, due in part to political, cultural, and social barriers, people in less democratic countries (e.g. Ethiopia) may not be completely free to articulate their needs and aspirations during public consultations.

 

Question 4: Arif, what are the two or three top priorities for South Asian governments who wish to use education to combat poverty?

Arif: I feel there are a few things that the governments could do to enhance the transformative potential of schooling in the lives of the poor in South Asia.

First, the quality of education needs to be improved drastically, specially at the basic levels. The kind of schools and schooling that have been made available to the poor do not enhance their skills that are economically rewarding or even help them pursue further schooling. The unprecedented expansion of education in the last 2-3 decades has led to the overcrowded and under-resourced classrooms with children graduating without acquiring literacy and numeracy skills. Without significant improvement in quality, the levels of schooling that poor can realistically acquire cannot help them break out of poverty.

Second, the evidence from the longitudinal studies points towards a targeted approach for the poor families as universal approaches do not serve them. Poor children are more likely to drop out of schools at early stages. Scaffolding their academic progression and helping their transitions into decent work are essential. Third, economic opportunities are fundamental for the poor families’ educational decision-making. If the labour market doesn’t provide a fair chance to everyone, and poor are less likely to gain decent employment through schooling, the goals of universalising educational access and eradicating poverty through it cannot be realised. Transforming labour markets however requires a wider set of reforms that address all forms of social inequality at the community levels, and the national and global power structures that determine the possibilities of economic growth in the regional countries.

 

Question 5: Simon, based on your rich experience, which country that you have worked in has been most successful in tackling poverty and what role did education play?

Simon: This is a difficult question to answer as my direct experience in each of the six Sub-Saharan African countries I worked in from the mid-80’s (Cameroon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mozambique Mauritius, and Sierra Leone) was time-bound and came at different historical points in the struggle to alleviate poverty. Each, except notably Mauritius, was facing very significant internal challenges such as Ebola in Sierra Leone in 2014/15, or were recovering, five to ten years on, from hugely destabilising civil conflicts as in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. But global factors have also been critical. For example, Sierra Leone’s economy was already suffering from the 2013 collapse in global iron ore prices which made its recovery from Ebola all the more difficult.

Statistics tell different stories, some suggesting a degree of stagnation in the standard of living in certain countries over the last 30 years; however, World Bank GDP per capita figures do show a steady improvement in all six countries with significant dips where crises have occurred. Covid-19 is set to continue this pattern.

Within education, increases in access and latterly of quality have taken place. While these cannot be stated as directly causing poverty reduction, some initiatives such as increasing girls’ education can be seen to have an impact on social development. For example, evidence suggests each additional year of a girl’s secondary schooling can reduce the chance of pregnancy by approximately 6%.

The richer the country, the better it has fared. Mauritius has been able to tackle its own economic challenges more successfully – as on the removal of the EU sugar subsidy, through greater diversification of its economy.  At the other end of the scale Sierra Leone has taken some important education decisions with its 2015 National Ebola Recovery Strategy. It has focused on improving teaching quality and skills-based learning at primary and secondary levels and increasing the relevance of higher education curricula to create a more effective workforce. These strongly suggest how that country sees the interconnections between education and poverty alleviation.

 

Round-table Discussion Participants

Prof Leon Tikly (Global Chair in Education and Director of the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education, School of Education, University of Bristol, UK).

Dr Tigist Grieve (Senior Research Associate, School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK)

Dr Emily (Markovich) Morris (Director of International Training and Education Program and Senior Professorial Lecturer, School of Education, American University, Washington D.C., USA)

Dr Tebeje Molla (DECRA Fellow, Deakin University, Australia).

Dr Arif Naveed (Lecturer, School of Education, University of Bath, UK).

Mr Simon Ingram-Hill (former Country Director for the British Council in Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Hungary, Mauritius).

 

Recordings and presentation slides from the full round-table discussion are available on the Bristol Poverty Institute’s conference webpages.

The BPI Conference on Poverty and the Sustainable Development Goals: From  the Local to the Global took place online from 27-29 April 2021 inclusive.

Throughout the conference our fantastic scribe captured visual minutes, summarising the key messages and discussion points. You can view the full conference programme on our website, and recordings and presentations will be available via the BPI website after the conference.

Day 1, Multidimensional Poverty

Day 1, Child Health and Development

Day 2, Livelihoods and Debt

Day 2, Food and Nutrition

Day 3, Engaging with Policy and Practice

Day 3, Education and Building Back Fairer

Author: Dr Saffron Karlsen, Associate Professor in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, University of Bristol

Dr Saffron Karlsen explores some of the key issues that must be addressed if we are to establish a more complete picture of these inequalities and their drivers

Introduction

The evidence of ethnic inequalities in the number of COVID-related infections and deaths in the UK is compelling. Rates of hospital death among Bangladeshi, Black African and Pakistani people are between two and four times those of the UK’s white British population.

But discussions of how to address these inequalities are dominated by preconceived assumptions about their cause. Despite lacking empirical support, such assumptions form a barrier against a more comprehensive investigation which might offer effective solutions.

Why the focus on the causes of ethnic inequalities is too selective

Over the past year, media, politicians and many academics have emphasised the role of individual factors – for example, particular genes/biologies or cultures/behaviours – in the generation of ethnic inequalities in COVID-19. We have heard much about the effects of co-morbidities and multi-generational residential choices, but less about the impact of social exclusion and the ways in which the opportunities of many people in society are limited.

This ignores the wealth of evidence showing the overriding importance of such structural or societal factors, including that provided by more than 4,000 stakeholders to the Public Health England inquiry into ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 last year, where racism and its consequences were considered central.

Instead, conversations remain somewhat simplistic. There is little space to discuss the institutional racisms experienced in education, employment, housing, healthcare etc. Or how these and other racisms contribute to ethnic inequalities in experiences of deprivation, unemployment, over-qualification, low pay, and poorer health – including hypertension, diabetes and respiratory illness, with their well-publicised links to COVID-19 complications.

If we wish to establish a more complete picture of these inequalities and their drivers, there are several issues that need addressing:

(1) We must recognise there is no evidence that ethnic inequalities in COVID-19, or the vast majority of health conditions which vary by ethnicity, are explained by genetic or biological factors. The ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 infections and deaths we see in the UK and United States are not consistent around the globe. Indeed, the relatively unscathed experience of many African countries is, to date, considered among the few pandemic success stories.

(2) We must acknowledge that little can be learned about these patterns of inequality through sweeping categories such as ‘BAME’, ‘white/non-white’ – or even slightly more disaggregated ethnic categories such as ‘Indian’ and ‘Black African’, which still ignore the vast differences in experiences within these population groups. Of course, experiences also differ by age, gender, religion, class etc. To ensure we are asking the right questions of the right people, we must embed people with lived experience early in the research process.

(3) We must also understand that proving the importance of one COVID-19 risk factor will not necessarily negate another. There is often an assumption that to see a true ‘ethnic’ effect, we must remove the muddying effects of ‘deprivation’. But this ignores the inter-relationships between these experiences. More sensitive approaches recognise deprivation as one of the ways in which racism affects the health of those in racialised groups – and this holds true for COVID-19.

These inter-relationships can also help us understand other limitations with the traditional approaches to addressing ethnic inequalities. Methods which statistically adjust for deprivation assume we are comparing like with like – that these measures mean the same to everyone in our analytical models. But the value of (for example) educational outcomes and social class as proxies for socioeconomic position is questioned in the face of evidence of the greater ‘over-qualification’ experienced, or lower wages received, by people in ethnic minority groups for similar roles.

Similarly, broad markers of employment status might accommodate ethnic inequalities in unemployment, but not the particular economic and health consequences of the repeated and longer-term unemployment that is more common within some ethnic minority groups. And there is also a need here to recognise that routes into self-employment may not always tell a positive story, particularly for those experiencing racism in the workplace, or while trying to access it. In the same way, assumptions that owner-occupation of property indicates affluence/good health become less reliable among those excluded from renting by racism or other constraints.

Without taking these realities into account, we can’t be confident that we have adjusted for everything we think we have.

(4) The desire to identify simple (biological) solutions to COVID’s ethnic inequalities produces barriers against more in-depth exploration. The concentration of people in ethnic minority groups in key worker roles is no doubt part of the explanation for ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 among the general population. But it does not help us understand ethnic inequalities in deaths among health workers.

While we know these inequalities cannot be explained by genetics, such assumptions mean we still do not fully understand what does explain them. Do health workers with certain ethnicities undertake roles which put them at higher risk of infection than other health workers? What has been the impact of the reported ethnic inequalities in access to PPE on COVID-19 risk? Or the reliance on public transport to get to work?

Additional workplace risk assessments and removing people in ethnic minority groups from the frontline were an appropriate response to an emergency, buying us time to establish the cause of these disparities. But assumptions of biological risk have prevented this more detailed work being done – which may in turn lead to employer reticence when recruiting or promoting staff from ethnic minority groups, exacerbating existing ethnic inequalities in employment without justification.

(5) This selective focus also limits attention on other implications of the pandemic. People in ethnic minority groups already struggling to make ends meet commonly found themselves in occupations that were more vulnerable to the economic consequences of social distancing measures. Our understanding of the mental health, educational and other consequences of lockdowns that have been lived in situations of deprivation, food-scarcity, overcrowding or digital exclusion remains lacking, but must also be part of this story – along with the positive contributions made by local organisations and communities to mitigate these difficulties, and how we may build on this in future.

Conclusion: We cannot find solutions by ignoring the roots of the problem

Summer 2020: amid the terror of COVID-19, an opportunity. Never before had so many people been galvanised around the need for action – in the face of ethnic inequalities in COVID-19, and recognition of the myriad ways racism devastates lives and the true sources of the UK’s ethnic inequalities problems. Unfortunately, this energy risks being snuffed out even before it really gets going.

In their controversial government-commissioned report, Dr Tony Sewell et al were right to draw attention to the legacies of racism – but not for the reasons they expressed. Historical experiences of racism laid the ground for the distrust and disengagement of many of those in Britain’s racialised communities. But these concerns persist, because racist attitudes and behaviours continue to be repeated and reinforced by members of the public – and society’s representatives and leaders. We cannot address ethnic disparities, including in vaccine uptake, if we ignore the reasons for this widespread distrust.

The pandemic has already seen a dramatic rise in incidents of anti-Asian and other racist violence; other patterns will no doubt emerge with the latest ‘foreign’ variants. COVID-19 has exacerbated existing ethnic inequalities in many ways, some of which – such as the impact of vaccine passports – are yet to be felt. Sewell et al’s report makes it less likely that these issues will be given the attention they require, adding to the sense that Britain is a society for some and not others.

 

Dr Saffron Karlsen is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Bristol, and co-leads the Bristol Race Equality Network. A recording of Saffron’s talk on ‘Understanding Ethnic Inequalities in COVID-19’ at the Bristol Poverty Institute’s webinar on ‘Poverty Dimensions of the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities’ can be found via the following link, alongside talks from Dr Andrea Barry (Joseph Rowntree Foundation), Ms Chiara Lodi (Black South West Network) and Dr Soumya Chattopadhyay (Overseas Development Institute): http://www.bristol.ac.uk/poverty-institute/key-resources/bpi-webinars/poverty-dimensions-of-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-bame-communities/ 

This blog post was originally posted on the International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO) blog and has been re-blogged here with their kind permission in recognition of the BPI’s role in supporting their collaboration with Dr Saffron Karlsen: https://covidandsociety.com/ethnic-inequalities-in-covid-19-acknowledge-multifaceted-influence-racism/