Income and population dynamics in deprived neighbourhoods: Measuring the poverty turnover rate using administrative data

Many studies of neighbourhood deprivation have confirmed that there is more continuity than change in the geography of deprivation. This stable geography can lead to an unwarranted inference that the households living on low incomes in these areas comprise a relatively static population. This paper develops the use of administrative data for the longitudinal observation of low income families in small areas, which is underdeveloped despite the widespread use of administrative data in the cross-sectional measurement of neighbourhood deprivation. An empirical measure of local poverty dynamics - the poverty turnover rate – is introduced, and created for small areas using housing benefit data for the city of Oxford between 2010 and 2014. A high turnover of poor families is observed and the poverty turnover rate is able to identify small areas with higher and lower turnover rates than the average for the city. The high turnover rates discovered in this study suggest that in this city it is primarily the flows of people in and out of the area, and in and out of low income, that maintains the concentration of poor families, rather than a static population of poor families. This approach can be used to provide a richer understanding of the population and income dynamics that underpin stability and change in the geography of poverty, of use to regeneration policy and the academic studies of gentrification, health inequalities and neighbourhood effects