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

Loans Give Hard Up Students a Buzz Until Pay Back Time Looms

Debt can be a good thing for young people—it can help them achieve goals that they couldn’t otherwise, like a college education…Young people seem to view debt mostly in just positive terms rather than as a potential burden.

Rachel Dwyer, assistant professor of sociology, Ohio State University

Professor Dwyer seems to be encouraging young people to take on more debt to feel empowered! A nationwide study she conducted with Randy Hodson, professor of sociology at Ohio State, and Laura McCloud, an Ohio State graduate now at Pacific Lutheran University, found many young adults actually feel empowered by their credit card and education debts rather than feeling stressed by them. Ms Dwyer did add that the results offer some worrying signs about how many young people view debt:

Debt can be a positive resource for young adults, but it comes with some significant dangers.

The more credit card and college loan debt held by young adults aged 18 to 27, the higher their self-esteem and the more they felt like they were in control of their lives. The effect was strongest among those in the lowest economic class. Only the oldest of those studied—those aged 28 to 34—began showing signs of stress about the money they owed.

Researchers examined data on two types of debt:

1. loans taken out to pay for college
2. total credit-card debt.

They looked at how both forms of debt were related to people’s self-esteem and sense of mastery—their belief that they were in control of their life, and that they had the ability to achieve their goals. Dwyer said:

We thought educational debt might be seen as a positive because it is an investment in their future, while credit card debt could be viewed more negatively

How debt affected young people depended on what other financial resources they had available:

• Those in the bottom 25 percent in total family income got the largest boost from holding debt—the more debt they held, both education and credit card, the bigger the positive impact on their self-esteem and mastery
• Those in the middle class didn’t see any impact on their self-esteem and mastery by holding educational debt, perhaps because it is so common among their peers that it is seen as normal, but they did see boosts from holding credit-card debt—the more debt, the more positive effects
• Those who came from the most affluent families received no boost at all from holding debt. Debt is not an issue for them. They have the most resources and options available to them.
• The oldest people in the study, those over age 28, were just starting to feel the stress of their debt.

Having education debt is still associated with higher self-esteem and mastery, compared to those who don’t have any such debt. That suggests they still see some benefits to investing in a college degree. But the amount of education debt mattered—having higher levels of debt actually reduced their sense of self-esteem and mastery. Dwyer said:

By age 28, they may be realizing that they overestimated how much money they were going to earn in their jobs. When they took out the loans, they may have thought they would pay off their debts easily, and it is turning out that it is not as easy as they had hoped. We found that the positive effects may wear off over time, but they still have to pay the bills. The question is whether they will be able to.

The study involved 3,079 young adults who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979—Young Adults sample. The NLSY interviews the same nationally representative group of Americans every two years. It is conducted by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research on behalf of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The results suggest that debt can be an important resource for young adults that allows them to make investments that improve their self-concept. But the results may also have troubling implications for the future of young people. Dwyer summed up:

Debt may make young people feel better about themselves in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have negative consequences in the long term.

Some young people from all social classes see education as important enough to get into debt for, but those from poorer backgrounds get the biggest buzz from borrowing money, and the rich kids get little or none. It seems hardly surprising. Just being able to get the money will make many such kids feel that their education is already bringing benefits. As the debt mounts and the benefits begin to seem less clear and further off, their enthusiasm wears thin.

Poorer students must stay realistic about their future. They will have to pay back their loans and borrowings, so they should not take on excessive debt, and must not try to compete with middle class and rich kids at university. Rich kids have no worries whatever happens. They are assured of a substantial allowance and nepotistic job opportunities from daddy and mummy so can get no buzz from borrowing a the odd few thousand dollars.