IN BRIEF


ACCESS TO JUSTICE Criminologists and crime historians will examine public access to justice in England from the 1670s to the present. The study will analyse data on over 200,000 victims involved in trials over this period to discover more about past crime victims. Researchers aim to contribute to current endeavours to improve access to justice and recommend strategies for reducing or closing ‘justice gaps’. ESRC grant number ES/R006962/1


FAITH-BASED ACTION Christian communities have been involved in challenging urban poverty since the industrial revolution. The first interdisciplinary theological analysis of poverty in the UK since the 2008/2009 financial crash will analyse the nature, scope, extent and impact of Christian engagement with poverty. Researchers aim to increase awareness among policymakers of Christian engagement with poverty and enable more effective faith-based action on poverty across urban Britain. ESRC grant number ES/R006555/1


DRINKING CULTURE From 2001-2016 the UK experienced a historic peak in alcohol consumption followed by a sharp decline. Researchers will explore how UK drinking culture changed over this 16-year period by analysing a unique dataset of 785,000 drinking occasions reported by 255,000 individuals. Findings will help development of policies and interventions to tackle harmful drinking. ESRC grant number ES/R005257/1


Housebuilding no help to Generation Rent


Rent’ is often used to describe this trend but a new study at the University of Cambridge and UCL indicates that this masks growing housing inequalities between young people. Findings from a three-year study of young people’s transitions into homeownership show that the proportion of young adults who were homeowners by their early thirties fell sharply between 1991 and 2011. “Young people in their early thirties were three times as likely to live in the private rental sector in 2011 compared with 1991,” says researcher Dr Rory Coulter. Insecure jobs, low incomes, student


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debts, tighter mortgage lending and availability and affordability of housing stock all contribute to declining rates of homeownership. Yet other characteristics such as partnership status, educational attainment and labour force position are crucial to whether a young person buys a home. Exploring the impact of young


adults’ family structures and backgrounds, findings show that young people aged 25-34 are more likely to become homeowners if their parents were more advantaged in the labour force or were homeowners. Where housing is more expensive, parental affluence becomes more important for the homeownership prospects of relatively advantaged young adults. Yet neither parents nor house prices greatly affect the probability of


4 SOCIETY NOW AUTUMN 2018 SOCIETY NOW SUMMER 2011


OUNG ADULTS ARE increasingly likely to rent privately and delay buying their own homes. ‘Generation


homeownership in young adulthood when individual level characteristics (such as having a low-paid job) make owning unlikely. Even access to the Bank of Mum and Dad is not the only or paramount force in determining ownership decisions when other factors are not conducive to owning. “There are lots of different pressures and trends affecting young people’s housing,” says Dr Coulter. “Increasing the supply of houses is not suddenly going to lift rates of young adult homeownership back to their peak of 30 years ago.” Rather, the study indicates that


policymakers must pay urgent attention to improving the security and affordability of rented housing where most young people live. At present, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is consulting into increasing the security of private sector tenants by extending contracts from one to three years. “In the short term, improving affordability and security of tenure, particularly for the disproportionate number of disadvantaged young families who are being pushed into private renting, as well as improving access to social housing, is where attention should focus,” he says. n


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Contact Dr Rory Coulter, University College London Email r.coulter@ucl.ac.uk Telephone 0207 679 0549 Web fthtproject.wordpress.com/page ESRC Grant Number ES/L009498/1, ES/L009498/2


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