Richard Berthoud

The mental health of ethnic minorities

Abstract Clinical studies have suggested that men of Caribbean origin living in Britain had much higher rates of psychosis than their white counterparts; while adults of South Asian origin have been found to have lower rates of depression. These findings have been controversial, both because of the inherent difficulty of diagnosing mental illness, and because of the possibility of cultural bias in the definition and measurement of these conditions. This article summarises the findings of the most substantial population‐based study of mental illness ever undertaken among ethnic minorities in Britain. A sample of 5,106 members of minority groups, and 2,867 white people, were screened for indicators of mental illness in the course of a national survey. Those who screened positive were then re‐interviewed to validate the initial diagnosis. The results carry some resonance with the findings of clinical studies, without replicating them exactly. Some doubts are shed on the appropriateness of standard measures o...

Ageing, income and living standards : evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

ABSTRACT In Britain, older people have lower average incomes and a higher risk of income poverty than the general population. Older pensioners are more likely to be in poverty than younger ones. Yet certain indicators of their living standards suggest that older people experience less hardship than expected, given their incomes. A possible explanation is that older people convert income into basic living standards at a higher rate than younger people, implying that as people age they need less income to achieve a given standard of living. Much existing evidence has been based on cross-sectional data and therefore may not be a good guide to the consequences of ageing. We use longitudinal data on people aged at least 50 years from the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the effects of ageing on the relationship between standard of living, as measured by various deprivation indices, and income. We find that for most indices, ageing increases deprivation when controlling for income and other factors. The exception is a subjective index of ‘financial strain’, which appears to fall as people age. We also find evidence of cohort effects. At any given age and income, more-recently-born older people in general experience more deprivation than those born longer ago. To some extent these ageing and cohort effects balance out, which suggests that pensions do not need to change with age.

'Race', racism and ethnicity: a response to Ken Smith

en Smith argues that while objections to the concept of ‘race’ are widely accepted within sociology, the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) study, Ethnic Minorities in Britain (Modood et al., 1997), seems to use a concept of ethnic group that makes it indistinguishable from ‘race’. This is because, he says, we believe: that an ethnic group can include physical appearance as a distinguishing marker; that there are important boundaries that separate ethnic groups; and that ethnic group membership can be based on the ‘objective’ criterion of family membership rather than simply chosen by the individuals concerned. He suggests that our ‘racializing’ of ethnicity indicates that we are studying a form of collectivity that has been captured by Weber in his notion of ‘status groups’. We agree with Smith’s perspective on ‘race’. His paper seems to us an unnecessary rehearsal of already well-accepted arguments. But we reject the suggestion that our work is ‘racist’ in the pernicious sense that Smith claims. His own views about ethnic groups are muddled – in particular, he offers no firm alternative theoretical or practical approach to the definition of ethnicity on which our analysis might have been based. Finally, we agree that Weber’s work on ‘status groups’ is relevant to contemporary research on ethnicity but we do not accept that it is the only legitimate way to study the phenomena in question.

Age at first birth and disadvantage among ethnic groups in Britain

Abstract This article examines the relationship between age at first birth and poverty among ethnic minorities in Britain. It is well known that ethnic minorities, particularly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, have very high rates of family poverty and early fertility. Because it has been established that early motherhood is associated with a high risk of poverty and other disadvantages, it is tempting to link Pakistani and Bangladeshi poverty with their early family formation patterns. We find, however, that age at first birth had little effect on the poverty experienced by ethnic minorities. While the disadvantaged outcomes of teenage motherhood within the white community appear to be associated with the young womens departure from the dominant social norm, when early fertility is the norm in a minority community, it does not lead to any further disadvantage beyond that experienced by the ethnic group as a whole.

Patterns of Employment Disadvantage in a Recession

There has been much commentary on the consequences of a recession on the incomes of households. This short chapter aims to contribute to the debate about the current recession by analysing the impact of the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s on non-employment patterns among people in the main range of working ages in Great Britain. The hypothesis is that the effects observed in earlier business cycles are likely to be repeated now. The chapter uses a series of General Household Surveys over a 32-year period, to show, first, the impact of cyclical factors on overall patterns of non-employment (including mothers and disabled people, as well as the unemployed), and second, which social groups are most affected. A key question is whether types of people who are already disadvantaged are especially sensitive to a downturn. Recent data can be used to test how far the experience of previous business cycles is being repeated in the current recession.