Understanding UK Society—Long Term Longitudinal Study

Understanding Society is a long term study of 40,000 UK households beginning in 2009. It is published as a series of articles in Understanding Society: Findings 2012, which, drawing on information gathered from the first two years of the study, has yielded a detailed portrait of a society suffering the effects of a deep recession in which young people have been hit hardest. The research, managed by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, also shows that efforts to get more students from poorer backgrounds to go to university have not been successful and that more needs to be done to get teenagers to live a healthier life in order to assure their future happiness.

Professor Nick Buck, Director of Understanding Society, said:

The findings provide a fascinating insight into UK society and predicted that some of the research would be influential in helping policy and decision makers to address some of the key issues facing a society battling to emerge from the depths of recession. The large number of people and households involved in this excellent survey means that this research really does paint an accurate picture of our society. As we continue to talk to these people in the coming years, that portrait will become even clearer and even more useful in helping us to address many of the crucial issues that affect us all.

UK Tory Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said:

Longitudinal studies like Understanding Society are invaluable for researchers, decision makers and society as a whole. They provide important evidence on how social and economic factors influence people’s lives, which in turn informs Government policy on a wide range of issues, from education to public health.

SUMMARY FINDINGS

• young people, despite the bad press they receive are, on the whole, well behaved and happy
• policies to widen access to higher education have failed
• perceived employment discrimination among ethnic minorities is low
• women, once they earn 65 percent or more of the household income pick up a greater share of the housework chores than their economically underperforming spouse.
• middle classes benefit most from higher education expansion:
  • policies to expand access to people from less advantaged homes have not been successful: an analysis of the social backgrounds of almost 34,000 adults between the ages of 22 to 49 reveal that it is the children of the middle classes, not the working classes, that have benefited the most from the expansion of higher education in the last 15 years
  • since 1992, there has been an 11 percent increase in first degree holders among the children of white collar workers, while among children of manual workers this increase is less than half at just five percent
• A healthy teenager is a happy teenager—teenagers who turn their backs on a healthy lifestyle and turn to drink, cigarettes and junk food are significantly unhappier than their healthier peers
  • young people who never drank any alcohol were between four and six times more likely to have high happiness than those who reported any alcohol consumption
  • youths who smoked were about five times less likely to have high happiness scores compared to those who never smoked
  • higher consumption of fruit and vegetables and lower consumption of crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks were both associated with high happiness
  • the more hours of sport young people participated in per week the happier they were

Whereabouts of Children

Only a minority of 15 year olds say they have been out after 9.00 pm without their parents knowing where they were in the last month, but for those that did, it is associated with problematic behaviour:

• 14 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls who have frequently stayed out late without their parents knowing in the last month (3 or more times) were visiting pubs or bars once a week or more
• 25 percent of girls who stayed out once in the last month without parents knowing admitted to consuming alcohol more than once in the last month. Alcohol consumption rises to 64 percent for girls who stayed out past 9.00 pm without telling their parents where they are more than three times in the last month
• however, family income has little effect on whether a child stays out late without telling their parents
• living in social housing or with a single mother increases the probability, but living in a stepfamily does not

Defining White British

The UK population remains predominately White British, but if one considers parentage going back just two generations, then the White British majority becomes much less homogenous:

• of those who define themselves as White British, 17.2 percent have some connection with another country
• 17 percent of those not UK born call themselves White British
• 35 percent of those who have parents of different ethnic groups call themselves White British
• but, 57 percent of White British people, or 48 percent of the UK population, are only associated with England. This means that nearly half of the UK population does not have connections to the smaller countries of the UK over the last two generations and for this period had only family links within England

Youth Unemployment

An analysis using Understanding Society together with its predecessor the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) of what is driving the extremely high employment amongst young people finds that they suffer from a “double penalty” in their attempts to find and keep a job. The two surveys looked at young people and employment over many years, so research making use of them together is able to demonstrate precisely how young people are more adversely affected in the recession and why their numbers in the dole queue continue to swell:

• before the latest recession, about 50 percent of 16-24 year olds who were not in work in 2006 had found a job in 2007, but it halved during the recession, with only 27 percent of young people who were out of work in 2009 making the transition into employment by 2010
• in contrast, the proportion of 25-44 year olds entering employment between 2009 and 2010 fell by just three percentage points compared to 2006-07, while year on year transition rates into employment among people aged 45 or above actually increased
• young people were also more likely to be laid off than older people, and this increased during the recession with 11 percent of employed young people in 2009 became “Not in Education or Training” (NEETs) in 2010, but the proportion of people aged 25 to 44 in employment who found themselves out of work increased from three percent in 2006-07 to 4.5 percent in 2009-10

Shopping Addiction—Thinking it Can Change Your Life!

People who overuse credit have different beliefs about products from those who spend within their means. Professor Marsha Richins says many people buy products thinking that the items will make them happier and transform their lives. Simultaneously such consumer materialism induces in them a disregard for debt. These two forces work together to increase credit abuse and overuse.

Wanting to buy products becomes a problem when people expect unreasonable degrees of change in their lives from their purchases. Some people tend to ascribe almost magical properties to goods—that buying things will make them happier, cause them to have more fun, improve their relationships—in short, transform their lives. These beliefs are fallacious for the most part, but nonetheless can be powerful motivators for people to spend.

Materialistic types hope for four kinds of changes when making purchases, but earlier research shows that these expectations are often not fulfilled. The four kinds of transformations expected are:

1. Transformation of the self—the belief that a purchase will change who you are and how people perceive you. This is commonly held by young people and people in new roles. Example—a woman wanted cosmetic dental surgery to improve her appearance and self-confidence.
2. Transformation of relationships—the expectation that a purchase will give someone more or better relationships with others. Example, a woman wanted to buy a new home because she thought it would enable her to entertain more often and make more friends.
3. Hedonic transformation—a purchase will make life more fun. Example, a man wanted a mountain bike because he thought it would give him more incentive to get out and go on “an adventure”.
4. Efficacy transformation—the expectation that purchases will make people more effective in their lives. Example, some people wanted to buy a vehicle because they thought it would make them more independent and self-reliant.

In proportion, none of these are a problem. They can be for people who have strong and unrealistic transformational beliefs, for then they are more likely than others to overuse credit and take on excessive debt. Other research by Fang and Mowen, 2009, and Netemeyer, et al, 1998 has also shown a relationship between materialism and gambling, and yet more by Mowen and Spears, 1999, and Ridgway, Kukar-Kinney, and Monroe, 2008, between materialism and compulsive consumption.

It is further evidence that our economic system is damaging to us, and professor Ritchins seems to agree. She thinks finance and credit counseling should be revised to help people understand their motivations for purchasing goods better, and recognize that products are not a quick fix for improving their lives:

Many financial literacy programs seek to prevent people from getting into financial problems by presenting the facts about interests rate and loans, but few seek to influence behavior directly, or focus on why people purchase things they cannot afford, and go into debt.

Is the Wagon Rolling Against the Robbing Rich?

Amid the recent fiscal carnage in Washington several studies of the US have been published concerning the situation of the average American. First, IMF economists analyzed the US public deficit and debt levels, and their relation to the demands aging Baby Boomers will place on the government’s Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs, while the birth rate lags at a record low:

The United States is facing an untenable fiscal situation due to the combination of high fiscal deficits, an aging population and rapid growth in government provided healthcare benefits.

IMF study, An Analysis of US Fiscal and Generational Imbalances:
Who Will Pay and How?

To “go a long way in returning the United States to a fiscally sustainable path”, the US government must cut the entitlement programs and especially healthcare—among the most expensive in the world—that face rapidly rising costs in coming years. Americans will have to pay more taxes and the government will have to cut spending on Baby Boomers—those Americans between about 45 and 65—and their immediate heirs.

To eliminate all current deficits and long term shortfalls on social plans for the current generation “would require all taxes to go up and all transfers to be cut immediately and permanently by 35 percent”, and “delay in the adjustment makes it more costly”.

Unless currently living Americans pay more in net taxes or unless government spending on current generations is curtailed, future Americans will face net tax rates that are about 21.5 percentage points… higher than those facing current newborn Americans.

Of course, the IMF is an arm of US foreign policy, or rather, an arm of the international policies of the US uber rich class who rule the world for the sole purpose of making themselves richer than their already obscene levels of riches. The IMF always makes the people pay whenever the rulers of any country get its finances in a twist by their greedy machinations. The ruling clique in the US are among the main beneficiaries usually. It is time they paid! Normally, they pay least, often nothing!

But the average Yankee seems amazingly placid, or gets worked up over the wrong enemy, all too often supporting the greedy manipulators because they are all too easy to fool. Often, they seem to think that they are themselves among the uber rich, but less than a single percent of the population are. That one percent have gotten three times richer in real terms over the last 30 years, while the average Yankee has got poorer once inflation is accounted for.

Not surprisingly, more Americans say that their financial situation is worse not better in recent years. For the first time since 1972, 31.5 percent of Americans are “not at all” satisfied with their financial situation compared with 23.4 percent who are “pretty well” satisfied (General Social Survey, NORC, University of Chicago).

Americans are also more insecure about employment. A record 16.4 percent thought it “likely” (fairly or very) that they would lose their job or be laid off. As few as 52.2 percent thought it “not at all likely” that they would lose their job or be laid off, easily the lowest confidence ever recorded by the GSS. Those who thought their standard of living was “much better” or “somewhat better” than their parents declined.

The General Social Survey—which NORC has conducted for forty years based on 2,044 interviews—is a biennial survey that gathers data on contemporary American society to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes.

On top of these, American “happiness” has been measured and took some blows, but some American stoicism shone through here. While only 28.8 percent of Americans, the lowest percentage since 1972, were “happy”, another 14.2 percent were “not too happy”. Happiness was hit mainly because of the economy and people’s own finances. Even so, 85.8 percent of Americans were “happy”.

Not all aspects of happiness fell during the downturn. 97 percent of marriages were judged to be “happy” (very or pretty), and 86.0 percent of Americans claim to be “very satisfied” or “moderately satisfied” with their work, a steady average since 1972.

If anything, it suggests that the average American lives in a cocoon. They are concerned for themselves and their immediate family, and are satisfied that they are not being repossessed like the family over the street, and still have a job to hang on to. Despite the hugely vaunted Christianity of the Christian nation, the average American is indifferent to his neighbour, as long as he’s all right.

The motto is not “Do unto others as you would be done by”, it is “I’m all right, Bud, You look after yourself”.

Fortunately, recent proposed cuts in public services have been firmly rebutted by encouraging united strength and purpose. Is the US sleeping Leviathan waking up? Let’s hope so, then you smug financiers, corporate bosses, bankers and bought men will have to watch out! Once enough of the people stop being taken in by the great Washington Repucrat-Demoblican farce, then the wagon of unity may be rolling, and the callous and greedy exploiters of the rest of us will be crushed by its irresistible momentum.

What Makes Working People Happier? Labor Unions!

In the UK the latest fraudster to head the government is keen to find out what makes us happy, while doing his utmost to make us unhappy by destroying the services we treasure like the National Health Service, free schooling, and a fairly neutral but certainly professional civil service. Maybe David Cameron wants to know what makes people happy so that he can all the more effectively make them miserable.

An associated project which he laughingly calls the “Big Society” while dramatically making society considerably smaller, for many of us at least, would be more appropriated called “Yet Another Big Lie” (YABL), Cameron doing his utmost, it seems, to out-Blair the Great Liar Himself, Tony Blair.

Social Psychologists know a lot about social happiness, but Cameron pretends no one knows anything about it, in an attempt to give himself kudos. One thing is certain, and that is that happiness is a relative emotion. It is popularly said that “money cannot bring you happiness, but it helps”, and that is about the gist of it.

People can be unhappy because they yearn for something, and may feel ecstatic to get it, but the pleasure quite quickly wears off, and lack of some new object or experience kicks in to make people again feel unhappy. Being wealthy removes a lot of the fears that the poor have to endure through lack of sufficient cash, but having it just leaves people open to a new desire and new unhappiness. The greedy rich simply set themselves new targets of wealth. If a media mogul owns two newspapers, he will not be happy till he has three and a TV station. Then he wants Three TV stations, and so on.

These very rich people will unquestionably be very unhappy that the ordinary Joe and Jane often want to organize into trades unions to try to safeguard the pay and conditions that they have. Good pay and conditions cost money to the corporation boss, so they are much happier, for a while, when the unions are weak, or in their pocket, or when their lackeys in Washington and London are bringing in anti-union laws. That has been the situiation recently in Wisconsin where Governor Walker suddenly realized he meant to campaign over union power, but conveniently forgot while he conned the voters, so he has just reminded himself and the electorate that he aims to trash the unions as much as he can.

University of Notre Dame political scientist, Benjamin Radcliff, calls it “a perennial ideological debate in American politics—whether labor unions are good or bad for society”. You don’t need to be a professor of poliutics to know that effective unions are good for the members and bad for the members’ employers.

Are they good for society, though? Well, if, ultimately, the unions disappeared and bargaining was entirely at the whim of the boss, most people would be far worse off, and bosses would be therefore better off, at least initially. Unfortunately for the bosses, and this is something that oddly doesn’t make many of them unhappy, when the people do not have much cash to spend, they cannot buy things and industry collapses. That ought to make the bosses very unhappy one would imagine, but too few of them are intelligent enough to realize. Only the intelligent bosses do realize this, and they are very unpopular in their own circles for being wishy washy liberals or even hard nosed socialists.

Anyway, the general upper crust view is that Joe and Jane get too much, and should have less, so that is the message of the right wing media and the right wing puppets called politicians. Most academics too go along with the popular orthodoxy, however insane it is, but not all. Some academics warned against the 2008 crash, not many, but a few, but the rest, the bosses and the politicos, ignored them as Weary Willys.

Now, according to a study co-authored by Radcliff, people who live in countries with strong labor unions were happier, regardless of whether or not they belonged to a labor union themselves. Data from several European countries as well as Japan, Australia and the US, showed that happiness in life meant happiness at work. And the dominating factor that made people happier at work was the security they felt through having a strong union to help them. Happiness relates to the density of unions in a given country. Denmark ranks near the top in both categories, but the US ranks near the bottom for happiness in all the countries studied.

Radcliff found there was a direct effect and an indirect effect of strong labor unions. Members have obvious benefits—job security, fair wages, benefits and decent hours. But for those who are not members, there is the “indirect effect”.

People who have unionized jobs like their jobs better. And that puts pressure on other employers to extend the same benefits and wages to compete with the union shops.

Not surprisngly, lower paid labor union members found more contentment through organized labor than union members on the highest salaries. It’s no coincidence that American workers have never been more dissatisfied with their jobs.

Clever employers, those interested in long term stability rather than short term greed, would encourage trades union membership. They might have to lose some excessive short term profits, but would enjoy the benefits of stability over the long term. As it is, they should look on the Middle East in fear, and wonder what they might be stirring up at home by their unshackled greed, unjust treatment of the ordinary person, and bogus democracy. That goes in the UK for Cameron’s Conservative and Liberal democratic (or ConDem) coalition. People will only put up with so much, notably when they can see that the system is blatantly unfair.

Radcliff specializes in comparative and American politics. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on the study of politics and happiness, having published articles on it in scholarly journals including the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Social Forces, and the Journal of Politics. He is author of the book Happiness, Economics and Politics.