Population Change and Geographic Inequalities in the UK, 1971-2011

The research will explore how the population of the UK is, or has been, geographically distributed. The project will bring a new and important perspective to debates about divisions, inequalities and the ways in which people in the UK live together or apart. It will address questions such as: are health inequalities between places greater now than in the past? What makes localities different - are they geographically distinguished more by housing tenure or health than they are by employment status or ethnicity? What areas have the greatest diversity of people and how has this changed between 1971 and 2011? To answer these questions, we will generate population surfaces from publicly available Census data for 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011 to enable direct comparisons between Censuses. Counts of people in a variety of population sub-groups (e.g., by qualifications, age, etc) have been released from each Census for sets of small geographical areas (such as enumeration districts or output areas). This allows the mapping and analysis of geographical patterning in population groups across the UK for each Census. However, these small areas differ in size and shape between Censuses, so the 1971 small area boundaries, for example, are very different to those for 2011. This project will produce population surfaces for each Census year as a means of overcoming this problem. Population surfaces are estimates of counts of people for regular grids (with population estimates over, for example, 100m by 100m grid cells); these can be directly compared between Censuses. So, once these population surfaces are available we will be able to consider how localities have changed and in what ways. This new population surface resource will be made freely available so that users can explore these changes for themselves and also consider in more depth the results we produce. We will use this resource to provide the first systematic review of how the population of the UK has changed over the last 40 years. It will show how population groups in the UK are geographically distributed and it will assess, in detail, how far different localities (for example, within central Scotland) or regions (for example, south east England or north west England) are becoming more similar or more different to one another in terms of their population characteristics. The project will also consider how the relationships between population groups have changed across time. For example, with a consistent geography, it will be possible to assess which small area localities have very high rates of unemployment together with large proportions of social rented households, and how the characteristics of these localities changed between 1971 and 2011. We will also be able to identify which population characteristics most strongly distinguish particular areas. As an example, the population in some localities in north west England may be very similar in terms of levels of poor health, unemployment and housing tenure, but differ in terms of the number of single person households or the average number of dependent children. The project will explore these differences in detail and, for the first time, construct a detailed profile of the geographical distribution of individual population groups and the multiple characteristics of areas in combination. The population surface resource will be invaluable to any users interested in the population geography of the UK, while the results of our analysis of population distributions will enrich our understanding of the ways in which the population of the UK has changed over the last 40 years.

Who will benefit from this research?

The project will make available a major resource to all users concerned with the population of the UK. Such users include the private and public sectors, academics, and members of the general public. The capacity to explore, through the provision of population surfaces for 1971-2011, local population changes across the UK, will be of direct benefit to commercial private sector organisations, policy makers, local and national government, charities and the wider public. The uses of the resource might include, for example, assessment of the impacts of policy on local-level deprivation, targeting of resources to people in local areas with long-term poor health, or simply members of the public wishing to know how their own neighbourhood has changed over the last 40 years. The analysis of population sub-group geographical distributions will provide a rich suite of results to all users who wish to know about the ways in which the population geography of the UK has changed since 1971.

How will they benefit from this research?

In allowing for local-level analyses, the population surfaces resource will facilitate detailed analyses of geographical inequalities and of the ways in which the population lives together or apart. Through innovative locally-based analyses of population change, it would be possible to increase the effectiveness of public services and policy by targeting, for example, areas of long-term deprivation, with a consequent impact on quality of life. Through the research results from this project, users from across the public and private sectors will gain an enhanced understanding of the geographical characteristics of population sub-groups in the UK, and how these characteristics have changed over the last 40 years. The combination of the population surface resource developed as a project output, along with the results from the analysis of population distributions, will provide a systematic and nuanced approach to understanding how local areas have changed in multiple complex ways, the particular problems areas face, and the allocation of resources to help alleviate these inequalities. These benefits could begin to be realised in the short term (within the project duration) and we will endeavour to make the resource and analysis results widely available through, for example, dissemination via local government networks. The impacts of the project will be geographically extensive, encompasing as it does the whole of the UK, and will reach users in a variety of sectors.

The research and professional skills developed by staff working on the project would be very widely applicable across diverse employment sectors associated with all possible user groups for the outputs from this project.