Bramley and Fitzpatrick (2018) investigate the impact of different factors in driving people to homelessness in the UK, and they refute the hypothesis that the event of homelessness is randomly distributed across the population. Childhood poverty, in particular, is found to be the best predictor of whether one experienced homelessness in the UK.
Picture by Matt Collamer, Unsplash
A ‘critical realist’ approach to homelessness
The authors start by framing the event of homelessness as the result of a complex interplay between ‘individual’ (e.g. mental ill health, substance addictions) and ‘structural’ (e.g. poverty, housing market conditions) factors. Poverty and mental health illnesses, for example, can exacerbate each other through a feedback loop, which, in turn, can push one to homelessness. That said, they highlight how the relative importance of different factors can vary between places, depending on things such as local institutions. Countries with more generous social security policies, for example, may have a lower overall prevalence of homelessness, but among this homeless population, a higher proportion of the people may face complex personal problems (‘individual’ factors). Milburn et al’s (2007) cross-national study, for example, found that in Australia (with its relatively strong welfare regime) young homeless people faced more 'individual' difficulties than their peers in the US (with its much narrower welfare safety net).
Methodology
Bramley and Fitzpatrick (2018) use three different data sets (Scottish Household Survey, UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey, British Cohort Study 1970), which they analyze separately, to try and identify the key drivers of homelessness in the UK.
The British Cohort Study (2000) dataset appears to be the most interesting one. Although it’s out-of-date, it’s the only panel dataset used, and it provides systematic data for every individual born in the UK in one specific week in 1970. This allows for a robust investigation of the effect of early-life factors, such as childhood poverty and teenage experiences, on the event of homelessness. Using this dataset, the authors estimate the impact of the following blocks of factors on the probability of one becoming homeless in the UK by the age of 30:
Demographics, which refers to ‘fixed’ individual attributes such as gender and ethnicity.
Childhood poverty, which is represented by three variables, two measured at age 10 (living in rented housing, lack of consumer durables) and one at age 16 (household income per head).
Geography, which captures factors such as whether the person lived in a rural or urban setting.
Teenage experiences, such as whether a person lived with both natural parents at age 16, and the state of the mother’s mental health.
Adult economic situation, which includes educational, labour, and housing market factors experienced up to the age of 26.
Adult family and life events, which has variables such as whether a person has a partner or children, or any long-term illness or disability.
Results
The results refute the hypothesis that the chances of becoming homeless are equally distributed across the population, at least back when the data was collected (1970-2000). This becomes apparent once we compare the predicted probabilities of experiencing homelessness for the following hypothetical people.
First, take a white male who had a relatively affluent childhood in the rural south of England, an unproblematic school career, went to university and graduated at 21, who was living with his parents at age 26, with no partner relationship and no children. He has a predicted probability of experiencing homelessness by the age of 30 of just 0.6%.
In contrast, take a mixed-ethnicity female, who experienced poverty as a child, was brought up by a lone parent, left school or college at 16, had spells of unemployment, and was living as a renter with no partner but with her own children at age 26. Her predicted probability is 71.2%.
Meanwhile, it is striking that childhood poverty was found to be by far the best predictor of whether one would experience homelessness by the age of 30 (see Figure 1). This suggests that early-life policy interventions could be a powerful tool in preventing homelessness later on in life. What’s more, it provides evidence that ‘structural’ factors, rather than ‘individual’ ones, are stronger drivers of homelessness in the UK, at least if we are to look back to the 1980s and 1990s.
Figure 1: Childhood poverty explained 52% of the occurrence of homelessness
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