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Measuring social exclusion: a lifespan approach

Patrick McCrystal, Kathryn Higgins and Andrew Percy

Introduction

The Belfast Youth Development Study (BYDS) is a longitudinal study of adolescent drug use in Northern Ireland being carried out at the Centre for Child Care Research, Queens University, Belfast. The study aims to examine the natural course, onset and desistance of drug use and the developmental pathways to problem drug use in a cohort of 12 year olds, who will be followed up over a five year period. The influence of social exclusion upon the drug taking behaviours of the young people participating in the study will be examined. This paper discusses the approach adopted by the BYDS research team to measure social exclusion in this cohort and its place within the study of social exclusion and young people, more generally.

Social exclusion and young people

Policy makers in the UK and beyond have recently focused much attention on problems associated with social exclusion and the marginalisation of significant numbers of people from mainstream society (Burchardt et al, 1999). The main cause of social exclusion may be traced to unemployment and other forms of joblessness. For example, the Prime Minister Tony Blair has claimed that 'the best defence against social exclusion is having a job...' (SEU, 1998). Young people, who fall into what has been described as 'Status 0' i.e. those not in education, employment or training (Istance et al, 1994), are therefore at greatest risk of becoming socially excluded during their adult life. The role of compulsory education in enabling a successful transition to the labour market is therefore a crucial one.

Social exclusion begins much earlier than at the point at which a young person decides upon which employment route to follow. The key point for deciding upon an employment route is at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level. In Northern Ireland, performance at GCSE can be traced to the selection system of secondary and grammar schools, which has operated there since 1947. The impact of this selection system upon performance post-primary school has been recently investigated (DENI 2000). It was noted that the most important factor for a pupil achieving a high GCSE score is gaining a place in a grammar school as, all other things being equal, being in a grammar school will add almost 16 GCSE points, equivalent to three GCSEs at grade C, to a pupil's attainment at age 16 years. The report also noted that in grammar schools, performance at age 16 is closely linked to the academic quality of the school's intake. In secondary schools, performance is more closely linked with, although not wholly explained by, social disadvantage.

Policy makers have recognised the importance of early identification of young people who are likely to end up jobless on entry to the adult labour market (McVicar and Anyadike-Danes, 2000). The belief that 'prevention' is better than 'cure' has led, at least in the UK, to the adoption of policies that try to 'catch' the future socially excluded early. Budd et al (1986) claim that the longer a person is unemployed, the less likely he or she is to find employment and the greater their social isolation. The UK government's three main policy responses to youth unemployment over the last twenty years have been:

1. to try to increase flexibility in the youth labour market by, for example, removing benefits for under-18s,
2. to try to stimulate a buoyant macro-economy, and
3. to stimulate a huge expansion of post-compulsory education and training in order to reduce numbers of unskilled labour market entrants.

Despite these measures the numbers of young unemployed and particularly long-term unemployed have remained high throughout the 1980s and 1990s, raising questions about the effectiveness of these initiatives for combating youth unemployment. McCready (2000) claims that Western European post-school education and training is rarely corrective in this respect. He adds that improving employment opportunities have brought least benefit to those without qualifications as employment services are often not effective in making appropriate contact with the socially excluded. The current government has responded to this youth unemployment problem by introducing the New Deal, a major programme of labour market re-integration for unemployed 18-24 year olds. The programme, however, receives entrants who have already completed compulsory schooling but not successfully entered the labour market. Targeting such help earlier in school for those thought to be at risk of future unemployment and social exclusion may prove more beneficial to young people.

Despite the degree of policy attention that youth joblessness and social exclusion has received in recent years, the research base on these issues is small. Early studies of jobless 16 and 17 year olds in South Wales (Istance et al, 1994) and 16-24 year olds in North-East England (Wilkinson, 1995) have not been followed-up with further research. The two exceptions are research that has been carried out in Northern Ireland (Armstrong et al, 1999 and McVicar et al, 2000) and research carried out by the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU 1998). The latter has been influential in providing an intellectual impetus to the UK government's new programme of social inclusion policy measures for young people (Armstrong and Rees, 2000). McVicar (2000) has highlighted a number of common themes to emerge from these studies, including the following:

1. significant numbers of young people aged 16 and 17 are neither in education, training nor employment in different parts of the UK, many for long periods,
2. the causes of social exclusion are a whole host of inter-related factors, often referred to as multiple disadvantages,
3. problems at school for the bottom 10% or 20% of the academic ability range, problems with youth training, lack of advice and low self-esteem are all contributory factors to social exclusion,
4. marginalisation at age 16 is a good predictor of marginalisation at age 21, and
5. labour market demand factors play a part alongside supply-side problems of poor 'employability'.

These themes further support the contention that initiatives to tackle social exclusion may be more effective if directed at young people before they enter the labour market. The BYDS will investigate these issues in relation to the needs of young people whilst they are in compulsory schooling.

Causal mechanisms of social exclusion

No official or administrative statistics measure social exclusion per se. However, Gordon et al (2000) in their recent study Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain offered an operational definition which states that social exclusion is:

a lack or denial of access to the kinds of social relations, social customs and activities in which the great majority of people in British society engage. In current usage, social exclusion is often regarded as a 'process' rather than a 'state' and this helps in being constructively precise in deciding its relationship to poverty (p.73).

Notwithstanding the research emphasis on process and dynamics, the main idea which comes through existing definitions of social exclusion is that of individuals or areas being cut-off or separate from everyone else. Such people and areas are characterised by high levels of unemployment (or 'labour market detachment'), bad health, family breakdown, high crime and in addition they are cut off from 'our community' (Social Exclusion Unit, 1997; Central Community Relations Unit, 1998). Factors operationalising social exclusion also include social position, and type of family, type of housing (Walker, 1995), and living in a jobless household (Gordon et al, 2000). The employability of young school-leavers is determined by factors deeply embedded in fundamental processes within the family and other primary social institutions. Table 1 presents both individual-based and community-based factors that are associated with social exclusion.

Table 1: Factors associated with the operationalisation of social exclusion

Table 1 does not provide a definitive set of factors to explain social exclusion, but provides some of the indicators associated with its experience. The relative strength of each factor has an impact on the existence of social exclusion, but there would also appear to be a cumulative effect as the existence of a number of factors increases the risk of being socially excluded. In relation to their employment prospects upon completion of compulsory schooling the BYDS will examine the impact of both individual and community factors. Murray (1990) claims that the breakdown of primary socialisation underpins the failure to assimilate to the work ethic. For example, Lee et al (1990) argue this combination has a marginalising effect on certain economically depressed neighbourhoods and estates which become ghettoised, further confirming what they see as the self-fulfilling prophecy of failure among citizens within, and whose status renders them more liable to various forms of surveillance and intervention. The young people participating in the BYDS are beginning post-primary education and may be unaware of the existence of many of the factors listed in Table 1. This offers the BYDS an opportunity to study the onset and development of social exclusion among young people as they progress through statutory education and prepare for the adult world.

Operational indicators of social exclusion are developed from two sources. One involves utilising existing datasets such as the BHPS (Burchardt et al, 1999), the NCDS (Hobcraft, 1998), the 1991 Census (Borooah, 2000), and the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (Caspi et al, 1996). Burchardt and her colleagues for example measured social exclusion among respondents in the BHPS along five dimensions consisting of consumption activity, savings activity, production activity, political activity, and social activity. Each dimension was assigned an indicator of social exclusion such as 'low wealth' being an indicator for savings activity. A definition of each indicator was then provided such as 'not an owner-occupier, not contributing to or receiving an occupational or personal pension, and no savings over £2000' (p.233) to define low wealth. The questionnaire developed for interviewing school children participating in the BYDS includes items that can be used to measure the impact of each indicator vis-a-vis Burchardt et al (1999). The other source is longitudinal data such as the indicators developed by McVicar et al (2000) in Northern Ireland. By incorporating both approaches, the BYDS will utilise the findings of existing studies in its approach to studying social exclusion with a focus upon its development and identify causal mechanisms operating on adolescents during compulsory schooling. The causal mechanisms developed by the BYDS research teams are based on the existing literature and in a form appropriate for 12 year olds. For example, McVicar et al (2000) produced a number of inter-related factors that determine whether a young person will experience 'long-term non-participation or unemployment' (p. 5). These were further analysed by McVicar and Anyadike-Danes (2000) who prioritised the characteristics likely to lead to an unsuccessful transition into the adult labour market. The most important characteristics were poor qualifications, living in a disadvantaged area of Northern Ireland, having an unemployed father, coming from a single parent family, being female, and being Catholic.

The other studies of social exclusion among young people completed elsewhere in the UK (SEU, 1998; Istance et al, 1994; and Wilkinson, 1995) have looked primarily at the experience of 16-18 year olds but the Wilkinson study included a cohort of 18-24 year olds. Whilst these studies provide a useful resource, they again emphasise the limited existence of literature on younger adolescents. In particular, the needs of young people in families affected by any of the above circumstances must be taken into account. Ten authoritative deprivation indices have been constructed following the 1991 census. The Robson Indicators of Relative Deprivation in Northern Ireland (Robson et al 1995) were developed to measure social deprivation. Whilst these may now be dated to some extent, they provide a potential socio-economic measure for young people participating in the BYDS.

Eligibility for free school meals, for example, is an indicator of propensity to future social exclusion. The Department of Education for Northern Ireland (DENI) (1990) has used the free school meal variable as an indicator of deprivation. Moreover since 1991, free school meals have been used by DENI as an interim indicator of social deprivation in the formulae to allocate resources. Jesson et al (1992) and Kelly (1993) claim that the percentage per school receiving free school meals is a powerful indicator of social deprivation and success at GCSE. Shuttleworth (1995) concluded that individual eligibility (or ineligibility) for free school meals is a useful measure of social deprivation at the pupil level 'over and above parental labour market status, family size and religious background' (p.490). At the school level, Shuttleworth claims that there is a strong relationship between the proportion of pupils per school failing GCSEs and the percentage receiving free school meals. This school factor is what Armstrong (1999) calls the 'direct' effect of school performance, and cannot be underestimated. For example, in his analysis of Northern Ireland survey data investigating the impact of school performance on the chances of young people staying on in full-time education, he found that those attending schools which perform relatively well are generally more likely to remain in full-time education, and therefore were better equipped to compete more effectively in the labour market.

The BYDS research team is testing the causal mechanisms of social exclusion identified from the existing literature with an emphasis on studies that have highlighted factors relating to young people. This enables the study to develop a categorisation of the social exclusion status of Year 8 school children from the data collected in relation to their family and neighbourhood. In so doing, it will be possible to identify the causal mechanisms relating to social exclusion for 12 year olds and test these prospectively.

Measuring social exclusion

Social exclusion per se is not an observable phenomenon, although its characteristics can be seen. Walker (1995) argues that it is not just enough to count the numbers and describe the characteristics of the socially excluded; it is necessary to understand and monitor the process of social exclusion and to identify the factors that can trigger entry or exit from situations of exclusion. Knowing the histories of the individuals, the sequence of events that have impacted on their lives and the changes that have affected others in the population should make it possible to disentangle the effects of personal and structural factors, and to construct theories that span micro and macro explanations. The longitudinal approach of the BYDS enables the study to examine such events and their effect on the adolescents participating in the research.

Room (1995) argues that 'any attempt to measure social exclusion must recognise that it is a cultural as well as a material process' (p.14). He argues that since its inception the measurement of social exclusion focused upon disposable income (or expenditure) of an individual or household at one moment in time. By broadening the perspective to identify and test the causal mechanisms of social exclusion, the BYDS will incorporate Room's (1995) perspectives of multiple deprivation, dynamic or process analysis, and individual household and local community perspectives. In so doing it will study the development of 'the factors and processes by which people find themselves unable to participate in society' (Hills, 1999, p.5) and their impact during compulsory schooling. This will enable BYDS to focus upon the future ability of young people to participate in the labour market. An individual's position or status within the labour market also dictates to a large extent their ability to effectively deal with many of the factors associated with social exclusion such as their health, dependence on the state, and the neighbourhood in which they live.

Walker (1995) argues that the major advances in our understanding of poverty and social exclusion are likely to result from the arrival of better longitudinal data. He believes that data generated from such studies make it possible to directly observe cause and effect and to separate the sequence of events from the behaviour involved. The use of a longitudinal survey such as the BYDS is, therefore, an appropriate method for studying social exclusion. The cause and effect, sequences of events and behaviours referred to by Walker will arguably be more directly observable among the group of young people in the BYDS as they pass through an important developmental stage of their lives before entering the transition to adulthood. McVicar et al (2000) also claims that longitudinal data are necessary to further understand the impact of social exclusion, claiming that apart from their own study no other longitudinal data exist for Northern Ireland. This evidence shows the BYDS is in a position to develop an important role in the study of social exclusion among young people especially as no longitudinal data exists on its impact among the age range included in the study, i.e. 12-16 years.

This offers the BYDS an opportunity to contribute to the information base on social exclusion in Northern Ireland through the study of its development and impact at an earlier stage in the lives of young people compared with research carried out in England by the SEU and others. The causal mechanisms of social exclusion identified for the Year 8 cohort at the beginning of the BYDS will assist the identification of those most at risk of becoming socially excluded during adulthood. Each year the BYDS will investigate the progress of young people in relation to the identified causal mechanisms that lead to social exclusion. The initial data sweep for BYDS will offer the research team the possibility of establishing a baseline measure for young people likely to experience social exclusion and examine this in relation to their personal and social development during the course of the study. In doing so the longitudinal nature of the BYDS will provide important data specifically within Northern Ireland, but more generally the UK.

Room (1995) argues that we need a more extended array of methodologies, including qualitative approaches, such as techniques developed by ethnographic, discourse and rhetoric research, in order to adequately understand what people are thinking when we ask them to talk about social exclusion. The BYDS is carrying out a number of qualitative studies using its 'high risk booster' sample and additional supplementary samples such as those excluded from school, which will enable the researchers to gain deeper insights into the experience of those who are at a higher risk of becoming socially excluded.

BYDS will not ask young people specifically about the concept of social exclusion. However, the existing data such as the Robson Indicators will enable us to study the impact of factors, such as those in Table 1, which trigger social exclusion and their impact upon young people during the course of the study. Much of the relevant data will be obtained from the main school survey but the proposed 'high risk booster' sample and other appropriate supplementary samples will provide opportunities to further investigate the causal mechanisms associated with social exclusion on young people excluded from mainsteam schooling and therefore more likely to find themselves excluded from society.

Concluding remarks

Whilst social exclusion has become an important topic within UK social policy, until recently it has focused on its impact upon adults. More recently, a focus upon its development and impact upon younger people has begun. The BYDS will investigate the factors causing its onset from earlier stages in the life of young people than has been previously documented, assessing its impact upon their health and social development prospectively until they reach the age of 16 when they decide upon an employment route to follow into adulthood.

REFERENCES

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Patrick McCrystal

Centre for Child Care Research
5A Lennoxvale
Belfast BT9 5BY

E-mail: P.McCrystal@qub.ac.uk