Symposium: Understanding Unequal Life Chances: How cohort data can help us understand place-based inequalities in outcomes for coastal communities in England
“Something to do and somewhere to go”: adolescent leisure participation and life satisfaction in early adulthood (Emily T Murray, University of Essex)
This paper examines how access to “something to do and somewhere to go” during adolescence shapes life satisfaction in adulthood, emphasising how uneven youth infrastructures and spatial opportunity structures contribute to long-term inequalities in wellbeing. The paper will use Waves 1 and 9 of Next Steps dataset, investigating patterns of leisure activity during adolescence and their long-term impact. Drawing on self-reported data on leisure participation, social engagement, and place of residence during adolescence, the authors first construct measures of participation in structured and unstructured activities and find that rates of youth participation vary systematically across place. Regression models then examine associations between adolescent leisure participation and life satisfaction in adulthood, with adjustment for household socioeconomic circumstances, area deprivation, and individual characteristics. This analysis finds that young people who participated in fewer leisure and social activities during adolescence have lower life satisfaction in adulthood. Next Steps data thus provides evidence of how spatial inequalities of access to leisure during adolescence have lasting and important consequences for young people.
Exploring spatial inequalities in educational outcomes: Are young people in coastal communities less likely to get a degree-level qualification? (Avril Keating, UCL Institute of Education)
Coastal communities have attracted particular concern in spatial inequality debates in England, with both policymakers and academics having sought to highlight the socio-economic and health challenges that are clustered in coastal areas. Previous research suggests that lower educational attainment may be one of these key challenges, but studies to date have been hampered by various data limitations. The question thus remains: is there a specific educational disadvantage to those growing up in coastal communities? And if so, why? This paper seeks to advance the debate by using longitudinal data from the latest wave of Next Steps (Wave 9) to examine whether young people who are resident in coastal areas in adolescence (Wave 3) are less likely to obtain a degree-level qualification by early adulthood (age 32). Using logistic regression modelling of these data, we find evidence of a negative association between coastal residence and degree-level qualifications, even after controlling for other known confounders such as gender, ethnicity, parental social class, neighbourhood poverty, and educational environment. We highlight that both neighbourhood poverty and educational environment attenuate but do not eliminate the finding that coastal youth are less likely to get a degree.
Coastal places and children’s leisure time: Social infrastructure and children’s wellbeing (Claire Cameron, UCL Social Research Institute)
In ‘left behind’ English coastal communities, civic infrastructure is degraded, young people’s mental health is often poor, and young people are marginalised from public space and debates. To shed light on this we look to this past to examine the potential of social infrastructure to support children’s wellbeing in coastal communities. We utilise the 1969 sweep of the National Child Development Study to examine what coastal places offered 11-year-old children then. Research questions were about differences in leisure time engagement between coastal and inland children, interests and activities coastal children valued, and what elements of place met coastal children’s interests. We found that coastal and inland children enjoyed similar activities. Coastal children valued multiple and wide-ranging interests including many that required community level organisation. Place offered familiarity, being settled, and family life combined with work and reinforced through social connections facilitated by social infrastructure. We conclude that children’s definition of wellbeing in coastal places is supported by having access to multiple and varied opportunities in the built and natural environment.
Is living on the coast associated with midlife multimorbidity? An analysis of the relationship between long-term residence and selective migration (Stephen Jivraj, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care)
The 2021 Chief Medical Officer’s report highlighted that coastal communities have some of the worst health outcomes in England. The drivers of this spatial disadvantage are unclear, and some evidence suggests living closer to the coast should have protective health effects. This paper investigates the relationship between coastal residence and multimorbidity and assesses the role of selective migration and socioeconomic deprivation in shaping health outcomes in coastal communities. Using regression models of data from the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS), this paper finds no association between coastal residence in adolescence and multimorbidity in midlife, but coastal residence in midlife was associated with a higher probability of multimorbidity slightly later in life. Individuals who moved away from coastal areas between adolescence and midlife were significantly less likely to report multimorbidity than those who moved to/ remained in coastal areas. Area deprivation was strongly associated with migration patterns, with those remaining in/ moving to coastal areas more likely to live in deprived neighbourhoods at midlife. These findings have important implications for public health policy.
