Demographic mix matters more than income or tenure mix

Recent research on population change at neighbourhood level suggests that the most important factor driving turnover is the demographic mix of an area, particularly the proportion of the population who are young adults or very young children.

Using neighbourhood level data covering England and Scotland from the 2001 census, the researchers show a tendency for young adults (aged 19-29) to move into deprived areas on balance and for other age groups to move away, especially households containing 30- to 44-year-olds and those under the age of 18.

Among other things, this suggests that deprived areas are home to more than their share of people making the transition from living with parents to living on their own.

They suggest that policies designed to achieve stable or ‘sustainable’ communities may need to pay greater attention to promoting demographic mix as much as income or tenure mix.

Indeed, policies to promote income or tenure mix could potentially undermine stability if they target single people and couples, perhaps through the development of starter homes.

The analysis also shows that:

• deprived areas do not have a general problem of instability; turnover levels are only slightly above average
• deprived areas do not generally see significant net out-migration of less deprived individuals; there are flows in both directions and these are nearly in balance
• an average of around 50% of migrants move to/from non-deprived areas each year.

The report, Population turnover and area deprivation by Nick Bailey and Mark Livingston, was published last month JRF and Policy Press.