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Housing Pathways and Stratification: a study of life chances in the housing market*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Judy Payne  and
Geoff Payne
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Abstract

Housing research has yet to achieve an adequate framework to guide research into the effects of social policy. Two concepts are outlined and used in this article to analyse one local housing market; it is hoped that these will prove generally useful. The concepts are ‘housing status group’ (a modification of Rex and Moore's ‘housing classes’ model), and ‘housing pathway’, which refers to the structure of housing careers. In a low-cost study of a large sample of child-bearing families in Aberdeen, the relationship between housing tenure and occupational class, family size, and experience of housing deprivation is explored. Five principles of the local housing market's operation are abstracted by use of the status group approach, and three main housing pathways are identified. Data are presented which show that the chance of encountering bad housing conditions is strongly correlated with tenure, and that in turn, access to types of tenure is strictly rule-restricted. The local housing market appears to be rigidly stratified, with housing status groups re-inforcing other patterned social conditions, and housing pathways which are sharply differentiated. Because of this, the authors argue for a ‘constraint’ model of family housing experience which can be integrated into a general sociological theory of structured social inequality.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 129 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Donnison, D. V., The Government of Housing, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967, p. 373.Google Scholar

2 The reader may care to look through the 180 references listed in ‘Housing in Social Research’ to see just how high is the proportion of technical publications that form the basic repertoire of the urban sociologist: Hole, V., ‘Housing in Social Research’, in Gittus, E. (ed.), Key Variables in Social Research, Vol. 1, London: Heinemann (for the British Sociological Association), 1972.Google Scholar

3 Donnison, op. cit. p. 183.

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9 Although Rex and Moore concentrate their efforts on developing housing classes as a complement to occupational classes, the close association of the two is apparent, for example, in their discussions of the male Pakistani's economic, social, and housing situation, or of the building societies' lending policies: Rex and Moore, op. cit. pp. 115–30 and c.p.37.

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20 There were no domiciliary deliveries in 1974 recorded in Aberdeen, as it is medical policy to have no domiciliary midwifery service, and to have 100 per cent hospital deliveries. The 847 women are 97 per cent of the category and can be taken as generally typical, subject to the limitations mentioned in the text above. The authors are most grateful to Mrs S. Diack of the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital, who recorded the data used in this paper.

21 Haddon, op. cit. p. 129.

22 See for instance, the discussion in Hole, op. cit. pp. 52–4 and 85–7.

23 This is substantiated by the 1971 Census figures for social class for persons, and for household heads, which show the same direction of difference as between the Aberdeen and the Scottish figures, for all classes except ‘4 and 5’ (where the differences is only about 1 per cent): 1971 Census 10% Sample Statistics, Table 5.

24 It is interesting that Aberdeen is slightly closer than Scotland as a whole to the pattern of tenure in England and Wales: 31 per cent, 45 per cent and 24 per cent to 52 per cent, 28 per cent and 15 per cent (+ 5 per cent others): Lambert, C. and Weir, D. (ed.), op. cit. p. 21.Google Scholar The effect of these variations is raised below. Other recent information on local housing markets is contained in Cullingworth, J. B. and Watson, C. J., Housing in Clydeside 1970, Scottish Development Department, Edinburgh: HMSO, 1971.Google Scholar

25 Readers may care to compare Table 1 above with C.f. Watson, , Household Movement in West Central Scotland, CURS Occasional Paper 26, Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1973, pp. 34–5Google Scholar. Despite the differences in the proportions of the three tenures, Greater Glasgow resembles Aberdeen closely. See also West Yorkshire Conurbation Housing Survey 1969, Department of Environment, London: HMSO, 1971Google Scholar; Welch, R. L., West Midlands Conurbation Housing Survey 1966, Department of Environment, London: HMSO, 1971.Google Scholar

26 X2 for Aberdeen = 210.2 which exceeds x2. 005 for 6 df. (discounting ‘others’ at 18.548, while x2 for Scotland is 39582).

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