Christina Beatty

The diversion from ‘unemployment’ to ‘sickness’ across British regions and districts

Beatty C. and Fothergill S. (2005) The diversion from ‘unemployment’ to ‘sickness’ across British regions and districts, Regional Studies 39 , 837–854. Around 2.7 million non‐employed adults of working age in the UK claim sickness‐related benefits, and the numbers have risen steeply over time. The very large variation in the numbers across districts and regions points strongly to extensive hidden unemployment, especially in older industrial areas affected by job losses. This paper builds on two previous papers by the same authors – one dealing with the theoretical framework and the other with a local case study – to present wholly new estimates of the scale of the diversion across all parts of the country. It also questions contemporary perceptions of the UK labour market and the validity of current approaches to re‐engaging sickness claimants with employment.

Understanding Area-based Regeneration: The New Deal for Communities Programme in England

The New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme is an ambitious English area-based initiative which aims, over 10 years, to transform 39 deprived neighbourhoods in relation to six outcomes: crime, education, health, worklessness, housing and the community. Data indicate modest programme-wide change against benchmarks. Evidence is used to examine the validity of the programme’s four design parameters: a 10-year horizon is necessary to achieve change; holistic regeneration can help to achieve cross-outcome change; working with other agencies and having other overlapping ABIs helps change; and, having the community at the heart of the initiative enhances outcomes. Findings in relation to these design features have wider applicability across area regeneration policy.

Twenty Years on: Has the Economy of the UK Coalfields Recovered?

Almost the whole of the British coal industry has closed since the early 1980s. The authors assess the extent to which the areas once dependent on coalmining have adapted to this job loss. A ‘labour-market accounting’ approach is employed to document the principal changes in employment, unemployment, commuting, and activity rates among men in the English and Welsh coalfields over the period to 2004, building on previous similar research covering the period 1981–91. The authors point to a strong recovery of employment among men in these areas, though this is not yet on a scale to offset all the coal job losses and there is important variation between areas. There is also evidence of extensive and continuing ‘hidden unemployment’.

Economic change and the labour market in Britain's seaside towns.

Beatty C. and Fothergill S. (2004) Economic change and the labour market in Britain’s seaside towns, Reg. Studies 38, 461–480. For thirty years, Britain’s seaside towns have faced the challenge of the rising popularity of foreign holidays. This paper explores how their economies have adapted, and in particular the extent to which high claimant unemployment in many of the towns is rooted in local job loss. By deploying ‘labour market accounts’ for 1971 to 2001, the paper shows that in fact the continuing imbalance in seaside labour markets owes more to high levels of in-migration than to job loss, and even the sectors of the local economy most closely linked to tourism show growth in employment.

A Gendered Theory of Employment, Unemployment and Sickness

The high level of receipt of disability benefits in the UK was until the 1990s a problem predominantly affecting men. However, the number of women claiming—1.1 million—is now on a similar scale. The decline of heavy industry produced large numbers of men with ill health and limited alternative employment prospects who claimed disability benefits. However, this explanation is problematic for women, who have seen an expansion in employment. We set out a framework that reconciles the central importance of the level of labour demand in explaining worklessness with the paradoxical simultaneous rise of womens employment and receipt of disability benefits. Women claiming disability benefits are overwhelmingly located alongside male claimants in areas where heavy industry has declined, pointing towards linkages between the ‘male’ and ‘female’ sides of the labour market. Additionally, there may be raised knowledge and local acceptance of disability benefits in these locations.

Geographical Variation in the Labour-Market Adjustment Process: The UK Coalfields 1981–91

During the 1980s and early 1990s the UK coal industry shed more than 90% of its workforce. In this paper we explore the consequences for different coalfields and individual districts by means of comprehensive ‘labour-market accounts’. The impact of job loss on recorded unemployment shows remarkably little variation, but this disguises considerably greater diversity in other labour-market flows. There is evidence that much unemployment has become ‘hidden’ and that the disparities between areas are much larger than official figures suggest.

Bringing Incapacity Benefit numbers down: to what extent do women need a different approach?

The dominant narrative used to explain the big rise in Incapacity Benefit (IB) numbers across Britain is essentially about men. The collapse of male employment in older industries, mostly in the North, Scotland and Wales, led to the emergence of a cohort of mainly older, less healthy men who accessed IB instead of unemployment benefits. What this overlooks is that among the under-60s the number of women claiming IB now almost equals the number of men. In view of the long-term increase in employment opportunities for women, the similarity in IB numbers is at first sight surprising. Does this mean that bringing down the number of women on IB requires a different approach? The article draws on evidence from a survey of men and women claiming IB, in-depth interviews with claimants and professional stakeholders and secondary data analysis. The identical geography of male and female IB claimants suggests that a weak aggregate demand for labour is through time transmitted, via labour market sorting processes, to exclude from employment the most disadvantaged in terms of skills and health, irrespective of gender. The article highlights important similarities between the men and women claiming IB but also a number of distinctive issues affecting women, including the roles of increased labour market participation, lone parenthood and the impact of benefit rules. It is concluded that a package of economic regeneration and supply-side interventions will bring down the number of both men and women claiming IB.

Exploring Change in Local Regeneration Areas: Evidence from the New Deal for Communities Programme in England

For many years, United Kingdom governments have instigated urban regeneration schemes. The 1998–2011 New Deal for Communities Programme was designed to change 39 deprived English areas, with regard to place-based, and people-based outcomes. Change data for all NDC areas from a common base-line can be used to establish relative rates of change across these neighbourhoods. Three sets of factors might help to explain why some areas saw more change than others: NDC Partnership-level activities; characteristics of NDC areas; and the wider local authority context. Results suggest that little change can be attributed to the characteristics or activities of NDC Partnerships themselves. This raises questions relating to the ability of regeneration schemes to instigate positive change, the limited nature of people-based change, the perverse role of educational spend and differential change across clusters of deprived areas.

Changes in travel behaviour in the English Passenger Transport Executives' areas 1981–1991

Abstract This paper sets out the background to the setting up of the English Passenger Transport Executives in the late 1960s and reviews their activities up to the early 1990s. The paper focuses on the use of data from the 1981 and 1991 Censuses to review the impact of PTE activities on travel behaviour in a decade when PTE activities underwent dramatic change and the populations in the areas in which they operate underwent dramatic change too. Conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of PTE policies and comment is offered about the approaching 2001 Census.

The impact of the UK’s disability benefit reforms

Between 2006 and 2010 the UK government initiated major reforms to disability benefits. By 2011 the impacts were only beginning to be felt, but from 2012 onwards the reforms are scheduled to hit hard and in rapid succession.