Where next for ‘levelling up’?
Under a new Prime Minister, what’s the future for this once-flagship policy – and what can research tell us about tackling inequalities?
Areport from the Northern Health Science Alliance and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for ‘Left Behind’ Neighbourhoods, published in January, estimated that people in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods live shorter lives than those in better-off areas, with more years in ill health. This costs the economy an estimated £29.8 billion a year in lost productivity.
People living in these areas also have a higher prevalence of the most common health conditions, and higher rates of mortality. These neighbourhoods also have nearly twice the proportion of people out of work due to sickness than the average for England.
The report used data from Understanding Society, one of the world’s largest panel surveys, which gathers data from over 100,000 UK residents each year. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council – part of UK Research and Innovation – its size means we can be sure that the Study truly represents the UK’s population.
Research using the data can tell us more about long-term inequalities – and suggest policies to tackle them. We know, for example, that deprivation is strongly linked to the number of people living with multiple health conditions.
But there are things we can do. Research also shows that green space is good for wellbeing – but ‘hard’ spaces, such as town squares, playgrounds, and pedestrianised areas can be, too. Their contribution, though, depends on how safe the neighbourhood is. If the area feels safe, people can come together happily, but if unsafe, a civic space could become a site of antisocial activity. Policy, then, needs to encourage local authorities to create green spaces in all neighbourhoods – and to build hard spaces hand-in-hand with other interventions to address the socioeconomic factors which make areas unsafe.
Another factor in inequality is education, of course, and research published last year using our data found that these inequalities are declining, but that this may be due more to social change than any education reforms. In England, where grammar school numbers fell, inequalities fell, but they also fell in Northern Ireland, which retained its selective system.
Finally, we know that people’s social origins affect how far they get, and how high they can climb, in their careers, regardless of their educational achievements – but new research from June shows that where you start out matters much less when the local labour market is healthy. In other words: in a thriving region, social inequality is much less of a concern.