HAPPINESS AND DEPRIVATION

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

Social Policy Research Unit

HAPPINESS AND DEPRIVATION

Jonathan Bradshaw

The What Works Centre for Well-being and the New Economics Foundation (Abdallah et al 2017)[1] has developed an index which provides a measure of well-being for local authority (LA) Districts in England. This note explores whether local level well-being is associated with deprivation using the English Index of Deprivation 2015.

The What Works well-being index is derived from pooled data from the Office of National Statistics Annual Population Survey: Personal Well-Being, April 2012 - March 2015 (and earlier). The index has four components:

·         Overall how satisfied are you nowadays?

·         Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

·         Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday? and

·         Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

Respondents are given a scale from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest) to rank their response to each question. Available in the data set are mean scores and indicators of variation for each component for each district and averages for all four components.

Table 1 shows that deprivation is strongly associated with the means of three of the components of well-being and most strongly with life satisfaction. That is an area with less deprivation and thus a higher deprivation rank has a population with higher life satisfaction. The exception is the anxious component which is only weakly associated with deprivation but the direction of the association is consistent (because a higher score means more anxious on this variable). Figure 1 shows the association of the mean of all four components of well-being and deprivation rank. Also the higher the deprivation rank, that is the less deprived an area, the less the inequality in well-being within the LA.  The opposite is also true - areas with higher inequality in well-being are more deprived (shown in figure 2). The association with deprivation is stronger for inequalities in well-being than for mean well-being.

Table 1: Correlation of LA deprivation rank and mean and variation in well-being 2012-2015

	Correlation with Index of Deprivation rank 1=most deprived LA
Mean life satisfaction	.640**
80/20 ratio life satisfaction	-.626**
Mean happy	.540**
80/20 ratio happy	-.573**
Mean worthwhile	.551**
80/20 ratio worthwhile	-.639**
Mean anxious	-.164*
80/20 ratio anxious	-.394**
Mean all four components	.551**
Standard deviation of all four components	-.618**

Figure 1: ID rank by mean of four components of life satisfaction 2012-2015

Figure 2: ID rank by Inequality in well-being

Conclusion: About a third of the well-being in a LA District can be explained by material deprivation.

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[1] Abdallah, S., Wheatley, H. and Quick, A. (2017) Wellbeing inequality measures. London: What Works Centre for Wellbeing/New Economics Foundation.  

TEENAGE CONCEPTIONS AND DEPRIVATION

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

Social Policy Research Unit

TEENAGE CONCEPTIONS AND DEPRIVATION

Jonathan Bradshaw and Karen Bloor

31 March 2017

Background

Between 2000 and 2015 the rate of conceptions per 1000 women under 18 has fallen by 52% in England and Wales. Most of the reduction has occurred since 2007 and the trend is still on a steep downward trajectory (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Conceptions per 1000 women under 18. England and Wales

The Office for National Statistics has a Conceptions-Deprivation Analysis Toolkit which is designed to enable the analysis of teenage conceptions by the deprivation of the area.  At the moment this is only available for the period 2009-11. In this note we have analysed the conception data up 2015 and related it to the latest Index of Deprivation (ID) for 2015 at upper tier local authority level.

Findings

It is already well known[1]^,[2] that there is a strong association between the rate of teenage conceptions and the level of deprivation of an area. Figures 2 and 3 show the conception rate in 2000 and 2015 compared with the ID rank. The association between teenage conceptions and deprivation has weakened slightly as the conception rate has fallen. This is because there has been a slight tendency for the more deprived LAs to have had larger reductions in their conceptions rates (see Figure 4).

Figure 2: LA under 18 conception 2000 rate by ID rank

Figure 3: LA under 18 conception 2015 rate by ID ranks

Figure 3: % change in LA under 18 conception rates 2000-2015 by ID ranks

There are some quite deprived LAs among the 20 LAs with the largest reduction in their conception rates 2000-2015, including Hackney (see Table 1). Generally London Boroughs have had the largest reductions in teenage conceptions.

Table 1: The 20 LAs with the largest % reduction in teenage conceptions 2000-2015 by their ID rank

Deprivation rank	Local authority	Teenage conception rate 2000	Teenage conception rate 2015	% reduction in teenage conceptions 2000-2015
36	Westminster	57.2	12.0	79.0
145	Bracknell Forest	35.2	7.4	79.0
69	Kensington and Chelsea	49.7	10.6	78.7
94	Wandsworth	68.5	18.6	72.8
51	Camden	48.3	13.5	72.0
19	Haringey	74.1	21.0	71.7
2	Hackney	79.5	22.7	71.4
57	City of London	79.5	22.7	71.4
152	Wokingham	27.5	8.1	70.5
21	Southwark	83.0	24.7	70.2
118	Merton	46.3	14.1	69.5
53	Hammersmith and Fulham	59.8	18.4	69.2
33	Brent	53.7	17.5	67.4
54	Bristol, City of	53.0	17.3	67.4
20	Lambeth	87.5	28.7	67.2
151	Windsor and Maidenhead	27.0	9.1	66.3
13	Islington	62.4	21.4	65.7
63	Ealing	40.3	14.0	65.3
24	Lewisham	67.3	23.4	65.2
15	Waltham Forest	57.2	20.4	64.3

Over the period since 2000 some large deprived LAs have achieved very large reductions in teenage conceptions (Table 2). Manchester, the most deprived local authority, has achieved a reduction of 56.3% (295 teenage births) and Birmingham has 55.1% (588) fewer teenage births.

Table 2: Most deprived 20 LAs in ID 2015 by % reduction in the rate of teenage conceptions

Deprivation rank	Local Authority	Teenage conception rate 2000	Teenage conception rate 2015	% reduction in teenage conceptions 2000-2015
1	Manchester	65.9	28.8	56.3
2	Hackney	79.5	22.7	71.4
3	Barking and Dagenham	67.5	31.0	54.1
4	Blackpool	69.9	43.8	37.3
5	Knowsley	48.6	31.8	34.6
6	Tower Hamlets	48.5	21.2	56.3
7	Liverpool	50.3	32.1	36.2
8	Newham	55.9	21.9	60.8
9	Kingston upon Hull, City of	73.2	38.4	47.5
10	Nottingham	72.9	31.2	57.2
11	Birmingham	56.6	25.4	55.1
12	Sandwell	62.7	31.6	49.6
13	Islington	62.4	21.4	65.7
14	Leicester	58.3	26.2	55.1
15	Waltham Forest	57.2	20.4	64.3
16	Middlesbrough	53.1	33.7	36.5
17	Stoke-on-Trent	60.5	26.9	55.5
18	Wolverhampton	63.3	31.9	49.6
19	Haringey	74.1	21.0	71.7
20	Lambeth	87.5	28.7	67.2

But there are also some very deprived local authorities that have achieved some of the lowest reductions in teenage pregnancy including Knowsley, Halton and Sunderland (see Table 3).

Table 3: The 20 LAs with the smallest % reduction in the rate of teenage conceptions by deprivation rank

Deprivation rank	LA	Teenage conception rate 2000	Teenage conception rate 2015	% reduction in teenage conceptions 2000-2015
88	Cumbria	27.0	20.8	23.0
133	Cambridge	21.8	16.5	24.4
84	Stockton-on-Tees	38.5	28.9	24.9
85	Norfolk	28.5	21.3	25.1
116	Stafford	30.3	22.3	26.5
125	North Yorks	19.8	14.1	28.9
105	Devon	26.0	18.4	29.2
141	Hampshire	23.3	16.5	29.2
137	Hertford	21.6	15.3	29.3
87	Lancashire	35.6	25.1	29.5
124	Gloucester	21.6	15.2	29.6
112	Essex	28.4	19.6	30.9
30	Halton	53.3	36.6	31.3
123	Dorset	22.6	15.3	32.2
32	Sunderland	51.0	34.6	32.2
104	Kent	31.0	20.6	33.6
130	West Sus	24.6	16.2	34.1
117	Poole	31.4	20.6	34.4
5	Knowsley	48.6	31.8	34.6
81	Medway	43.0	28.1	34.7

Finally Table 4 lists the 20 LAs still with the highest teenage conception rates in 2015. Blackpool has reduced its teenage conception rate by less than average and now has the highest rate. Hull has reduced its conception rate by more than average but still has the second highest rate of all English LAs.

 Table 4: The 20 LAs with the highest rate of teenage conceptions in 2015

Deprivation rank	LA	Teenage conception rate 2000	Teenage conception rate 2015	% reduction in teenage conceptions 2000-2015
4	Blackpool	69.9	43.8	37.3
9	Kingston upon Hull, City of	73.2	38.4	47.5
49	North East Lincolnshire	63.6	37.6	40.9
30	Halton	53.3	36.6	31.3
28	Hartlepool	57.4	35.8	37.6
32	Sunderland	51.0	34.6	32.2
31	Barnsley	52.1	33.7	35.3
16	Middlesbrough	53.1	33.7	36.5
55	Redcar and Cleveland	57.0	33.7	40.9
7	Liverpool	50.3	32.1	36.2
25	Salford	53.5	32.0	40.2
18	Wolverhampton	63.3	31.9	49.6
5	Knowsley	48.6	31.8	34.6
38	Doncaster	69.3	31.8	54.1
12	Sandwell	62.7	31.6	49.6
35	Walsall	61.5	31.5	48.8
10	Nottingham	72.9	31.2	57.2
3	Barking and Dagenham	67.5	31.0	54.1
46	Coventry	64.9	29.9	53.9
41	St. Helens	50.7	29.6	41.6

The background data for this analysis including the results for other LAs can be obtained by emailing jonathan.bradshaw@york.ac.uk.

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[1] Bradshaw, J. Finch, N, and Miles JNV (2005) Deprivation and variations in teenage conceptions and abortions in England, J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2005: 31 (1)  15-19.

[2] Wellings, C.  et al (2016) Changes in conceptions in women younger than 18 years and the circumstances of young mothers in England in 2000-2012: an observational study, Lancet 388, 586-595