Karen Rowlingson

Lone motherhood and socio-economic disadvantage: Insights from quantitative and qualitative evidence

Childrens socio-economic origins have a major impact on their socio-economic destinations. But what effect do they have on other kinds of destinations, such as family life? In this article we assess the extent and nature of the relationship between social class background and lone motherhood, using a combination of research methods. We analyse three large datasets and explore in detail qualitative information from 44 in-depth interviews. Our analysis shows that women from working class backgrounds are more likely to become lone mothers (especially never-married lone mothers) than women from middle class backgrounds. Moreover, the experience of lone motherhood is very different for women from working class backgrounds compared with other women.

The ‘Deserving’ Rich? Inequality, Morality and Social Policy

There is a long tradition in social policy of discussing and critiquing the notion of ‘deservingness’ in relation to ‘the poor’. This paper will apply such debates to ‘the rich’ to consider the grounds on which this group might be considered ‘deserving’. The paper identifies three sets of arguments. The first set of arguments concerns the appropriateness of rewarding merit/hard work/effort/risk-taking etc. The second concerns more consequentialist/economic arguments about providing incentives for wealth creation. And the third considers the character and behaviour of the rich. As well as discussing the potential criteria for deservingness, the paper will also debate whether the degree of income and wealth gained by the rich is deserved. Finally, the paper will discuss the social policy implications, including taxation policies, which emerge from this debate.

Her House, His Pension? The Division of Assets Among (Ex-) Couples and the Role of Policy

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Payday lending in the UK: the regul(aris)ation of a necessary evil?

Concern about the increasing use of payday lending led the UKs Financial Conduct Authority to introduce landmark reforms in 2014/15. While these reforms have generally been welcomed as a way of curbing ‘extortionate’ and ‘predatory’ lending, this paper presents a more nuanced picture based on a theoretically-informed analysis of the growth and nature of payday lending combined with original and rigorous qualitative interviews with customers. We argue that payday lending has grown as a result of three major and inter-related trends: growing income insecurity for people both in and out of work; cuts in state welfare provision; and increasing financialisation. Recent reforms of payday lending do nothing to tackle these root causes. Our research also makes a major contribution to debates about the ‘everyday life’ of financialisation by focusing on the ‘lived experience’ of borrowers. We show that, contrary to the rather simplistic picture presented by the media and many campaigners, various aspects of payday lending are actually welcomed by customers, given the situations they are in. Tighter regulation may therefore have negative consequences for some. More generally, we argue that the regul(aris)ation of payday lending reinforces the shift in the role of the state from provider/redistributor to regulator/enabler.

The variegated financialization of sub-prime credit markets

The ‘financialization of everyday life’ is a concept widely recognized by academics as an increasingly fundamental way of understanding the impact of neoliberal ideologies and financial processes on individual identities, subjectivities and relationships with financial services. This article contributes to debates on the consumption of sub-prime credit and calls for a sophisticated analysis of this aspect of financialization to take into account the variegated use of financial services and use of credit by people on low and moderate incomes. Drawing on qualitative analysis of the ‘lived experience’ of financialization, based on rigorous in-depth interviews with 44 low/middle income borrowers in the United Kingdom the article concludes that: individuals are at risk of financial insecurity due to increasing variegation of credit markets, and; that the binaries of ‘super inclusion’/’relic’ financial ecologies fail to reflect the complexity and variegation of credit use in contemporary society as a result of financialization.

‘You Can’t Take It with You When You Die’: Wealth, Intestacy Rules and Inheritance Tax

Increasing numbers of people in the UK are leaving bequests of financial value when they die. This chapter reviews the scale of inheritance and the policies around UK intestacy rules and inheritance tax. Three main issues are highlighted. First, there are stark inequalities between one half of the population who currently leave nothing of any financial value when they die and one in twenty who leave more than half a million pounds. Second, the Taws of succession’, which govern who benefits from an estate if there is no will, have recently been reformed but (still) do not recognise cohabitation despite the increase in cohabitation among older people. Third, very few estates pay inheritance tax which remains a very unpopular tax despite the many economic and philosophical arguments in its favour.

The Impacts of, and Motivations for, Lifetime Gifts

We saw in Chap. 4 that some families give substantial lifetime gifts to help with things like housing and education. But even a small gift could potentially make a big difference to someone with very little. So how much difference do lifetime gifts make to people, and in what ways? What would people have done if they had not received these gifts? Such hypothetical counter-factuals have their limitations, as it is impossible to know for sure what would have happened if a gift had not been received, but it is interesting nevertheless to see how people responded to this question in our interviews. As well as considering the impact on the recipient, this chapter also explores, quite uniquely in studies of this kind, the impact on the donor of the gift. How difficult was it for the donor to find the money and how did they do so? And, finally in terms of impact, this chapter provides, for the first time in the UK, both quantitative and qualitative evidence of the reported difference gifts (and loans) made to the relationships between the donor and recipient/lender and borrower.

The Nature of ‘the Family’ and Family Obligations in the Twenty-First Century

This chapter begins with an analysis of the arguments and evidence about the apparent ‘decline of the family’. The issues raised here have focused largely on changing family structures and have, at times, achieved a very high public profile not least in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise in lone parenthood seen as a particular challenge to the nuclear family. The particular focus on family structures, however, provides only a partial picture of the state of family life, and the chapter therefore moves on to more academic debates about the nature of relationships between family members in terms of solidarity, conflict and ambivalence. We then turn to existing data on inter-generational financial exchanges to illustrate one particular dimension of family relationships: functional exchange. This data is interesting in itself but has also been used to explore the relationship between the provision of welfare within families and that provided by more formal structures of the state. In particular, there has been concern that welfare states have ‘crowded out’ family support and thus undermined the role of the family. This apparent ‘crowding out’ has also been seen, along with the concerns about the ‘decline of the family’, as part of a more general process of de-familialisation. We discuss this in part by reviewing the arguments and evidence around actual levels of financial exchange within families. Finally, we turn to another relevant strand of this debate: the role of values and social norms in relation to family life.

Public Attitudes to Different Generations

In this chapter, we continue with our analysis of attitudes to supporting different generations but, this time, rather than focus on views and norms in relation to private inter-generational financial transfers (within families), we consider attitudes of different generations to public intergenerational transfers via the welfare state (within society) more generally. The first part of this chapter therefore reviews existing data on public attitudes towards supporting different generations through the welfare state. The second part then reviews the quantitative and qualitative data from our Leverhulme Trust study on people’s views about which generations have had the better deal, financially, in life. Our analysis sheds light on whether or not there is generational tension or conflict at the macro (societal) level to complement our previous findings on the nature of intergenerational relationships at the micro (family) level.

The Extent and Nature of Lifetime Gifts

Chapter 3 reviewed a range of studies, including those using international data on lifetime gifts within families. We argued that there has been no decline in the strength of family relationships but that there have certainly been many changes in the structure of families and the nature of relationships between family members. The evidence also suggests that, within families, support is related to a range of factors not least the perceived need of those requiring support and the available resources of the potential donors. However, there are a number of limitations with the data on lifetime gifts and therefore gaps in our understanding of inter-generational transfers and relationships, particularly in relation to the UK. First of all, much of this international evidence excludes the UK because the data sets (primarily the European SHARE data) do not include the British population. Even where some data sets do include the British population (e.g. ELSA), these data sets are typically focused on samples of older people (aged 50 plus) and do not therefore represent the full adult population. Also, these data sets contain quantitative data on a range of issues and are not focused particularly on inter-generational transfers so while they are very helpful in gaining a broad picture of lifetime gifts in families, the range of issues covered is limited and they cannot provide a more in-depth account of why people engage in gift-giving and how this impacts on family relationships. As discussed in Chap. 1, our Leverhulme Trust study of inter-generational lifetime transfers used a mixed methods approach (survey research with a cross-section of the adult British population combined with in-depth interviews with 42 people within 15 families). This, and the following two chapters, now turns to this new quantitative and qualitative evidence to explore inter-generational exchanges and relationships in Britain.