CHASM previous events

The poverty premium

People on lower incomes pay higher costs for essential services like insurance, credit, and energy. This unfair burden is known as the ‘poverty premium’.

Join Professor Martin Coppack from the University’s Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management who will present insights on this pressing issue. In his previous role, as Director of Fair By Design, Martin also led the UK’s national campaign to eliminate the poverty premium.

Martin will be joined by Tom Levitt. Tom was a co-founder of Fair for You CIC, fighting poverty one ethical loan at a time, and chair of trustees at its owner, the Fair Credit Charity (2014-25). Formerly a Labour MP (1997-2010, including DWP select committee 2007-10), Tom has been a writer and consultant on responsible and sustainable business since 2010. He’s currently sustainability lead at the Claude Littner Business School, University of West London, a member of the CHASM advisory board and a season ticket holder at Brentford FC.

This thought-provoking discussion will explore the root causes and the urgent need for change. The event will include opportunities for the audience to engage in the debate and share their perspectives.

The public-private mix

Hosted by the Social Policy Association Pensions Policy Research Group, this seminar brings together academics from various countries to discuss and explore the intricate balance between public and private pension systems. The seminar offers a unique opportunity to hear from leading experts in the field, gain valuable insights, and engage in stimulating discussions on pension systems.

Our distinguished speakers include Aart-Jan Riekhoff, Senior Researcher at the Finnish Centre for Pensions; Dirk Hofäcker, Professor of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen; and Traute Meyer, Professor of Social Policy at the University of Southampton.

The programme

Each speaker will provide a brief presentation followed by an interactive session for questions and discussion. Presentations will include:

• Pension reform and pension adequacy in the UK 1993-2020 - A comparative European perspective – Prof Traute Meyer
• The unfinished privatisation of the German pension system – Prof Dirk Hofäcker
• Pensions in Finland: A typical case of public crowding out private – Dr Aart-Jan Riekhoff

What do financial inclusion and financial wellbeing mean for people in the social care sector?

CHASM's Professor Adele Atkinson ran a practical workshop at the Centre for Care earlier this week, designed to encourage participants to explore the role of money and finance in the lives of people providing and receiving care. Participants were very clear that the key challenges revolved around income predictability, whilst also highlighting the importance of access to cash and the need for accessible financial advice tailored to carers and care recipients. Topics discussed made clear the high levels of vulnerability, including those in the care workforce opting out of pension auto-enrolment, the lack of insurance products tailored to the needs of people needing short- or long-term care or those who look after them, and the additional challenges for migrants working in the sector. Participants also discussed how financial and non-financial factors influenced the financial well-being of unpaid carers, increasing social isolation and significantly reducing opportunities to enjoy leisure time or seek new educational opportunities. CHASM looks forward to more opportunities for knowledge exchange and working with the Centre for Care in the future. 

Class, gender and wealth: To what extent are gender inequalities recognised in the context of accessing welfare policies?

Our April CHASM Seminar will be delivered by Dr Stephan Köppe, Assistant Professor of Social Policy at University College Dublin.

Welfare state research has illustrated how gender inequalities of employment and income limit social citizenship rights. Yet, corresponding gender wealth gaps have been largely ignored in the context of accessing welfare policies. By drawing on the capabilities approach the authors, Stephan Köppe and Dr Dorota Szelewa, link the literature on class, gender and wealth and how these intersect the real use of social policies.

Empirically, Stephan and Dorota study the Irish Nursing Home Support Scheme, called the Fair Deal, that draws heavily on personal income and wealth before the state covers nursing home fees. They apply microsimulations for stacking and profiling income, wealth and state support to identify agency inequalities. Their results demonstrate that although women have lower income and wealth on average, affluent men and women benefit more from the scheme. These affluent nursing home residents can also shield the largest share of their inheritance, which suggests potential gendered bequest patterns, raising concerns about intergenerational inequality.

Stephan is Assistant Professor of Social Policy at University College Dublin and fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy. His research investigates the nexus of public and private welfare. This includes both the political economy of welfare market creation and analyses of inequalities resulting of these reforms. This includes policy studies on housing wealth, provision of long-term care, private pension or private schools. More recently, his research also includes family sociology with a focus on large families, family conflicts and paternity/parental leave schemes.

No one left behind? Monitoring the income floor in Great Britain 1991-2021

In our March Seminar Dr Selçuk Bedük, Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy at the University of Oxford, presents research which aims to understand whether we are lifting the standards for everyone or leaving the poorest behind.

Over the past two decades, relative poverty rates in the UK have been remarkably stable despite significant economic downturns and regressive policy changes. While poverty rates have not been changed, recent evidence shows that poverty experiences are more intensified, and extreme forms of poverty have been on the rise. 'In our paper, we study the conditions of the poorest, who are not captured by standard poverty measures, but likely to suffer from recent austerity reforms in the UK’, explains Dr Selçuk Bedük.

‘Our aim is to understand whether we are lifting the standards for everyone or leaving the poorest behind. Using long-term longitudinal survey data, we build a measure of the income floor based on moving averages, and observe and explain the trends and changes in its level. Our findings show a secular increase in the income floor between 1990 and 2013, followed by a sharp decline coinciding with the implementation of austerity measures. The income floor in Great Britain is largely made of social protection benefits, in particular those related to children and housing, and as a result is very responsive to policy changes. Decomposition results based on counterfactual simulations suggest that the drop in the income floor between 2013 and 2019 is largely explained by changes in tax-benefit policies.’

The financial constraints of living with terminal illness while on a UK visa: reflections from professionals

Whereas the impact of terminal illness on financial stability is well known, this is not the case for visa-holding migrants to the UK. In this paper, we aim to investigate the financial stability of individuals and families at the intersections of terminal illness and migration, through the lens of the professionals supporting them.

Results indicate that that having a terminal illness while a migrant, accompanies a greater degree of financial and material challenge as well as a specific array of stressors. There are also numerous roadblocks and hurdles that impede on the basic necessities needed at end of life.

Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham, linked to the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity (IRIS). A large share of her research interests is linked to migration-based inequalities in many areas, including education, employment, and health. She has led and participated in funded research projects on these topics, including the project that this presentation is based on.

Harmful Gambling and Housing Precarity

Prevalence dualities and an intervention framework at Birmingham City Council 

This seminar presentation is based on a 2-year CPFW (Aston University) research project with Birmingham City Council (BCC) which aimed to understand harmful gambling prevalence and to develop an intervention framework to help prevent council tenancy loss due to problem gambling.

The mixed-methods approach included focus groups, tenant interviews and a council tenant survey. Being in rent arrears was taken as the key variable to investigate the prevalence of harmful gambling linked to housing insecurity. Results revealed that 1 in 5 of BCC tenant respondents have been affected by harmful gambling, and that problem gamblers were twice as likely to be in rent arrears than other gamblers. Reinforcing previous studies which have shown a two-way relationship between harmful gambling and homelessness, this study extends that duality in the prevalence of harmful gambling.

Dr Halima Sacranie is the Director of Housing Research at the regional thinktank The Centre for the New Midlands, and is also an Honorary Research Fellow at CHASM.

She completed her PhD in 2012 at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, and went on to lead the Housing and Communities Research Group from 2018 to 2023. Halima’s research is focussed on housing and communities - an important arena for current policy and practice challenges in relation to housing supply, quality, affordability and insecurity, as well as neighbourhoods and place-making, and the role of councils and third sector housing organisations in the provision of housing and related services.

CHASM Annual Conference 2024: The gender wealth gap: causes, consequences and solutions

Women face multiple structural disadvantages across the life course impacting their financial security and wellbeing. The gender pay gap, inadequate recognition and compensation for care work and ‘gender blind’ private pension systems are among the key causes. Socially constructed gender norms may also serve to influence the differentiated financial behaviours and outcomes of men and women.

All of these differences accumulate and crystallise in later life, resulting in a situation where women are much more likely to have lower levels of wealth and greater financial insecurity than men. Women are also more likely to require care in later life due to longer life expectancy, on average, but have fewer resources to fund that care.

At this year’s CHASM conference, we bring together the latest research evidence, expert analyses and real-life stories to better understand the causes and consequences of this longstanding inequality, and debate what more needs to be done to achieve sustainable improvement in women’s’ financial wellbeing.

CHASM is delighted to welcome three keynote speakers to the conference.

• Professor Debora Price, Professor of Social Gerontology at The University of Manchester
• Faith Reynolds, Adviser to the Board at TISA
• Jonquil Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Personal Finance. Open University

𝗧𝗼𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗮 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗔 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗡𝗲𝘀𝘁'𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀' 𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Presented by: Maria Fernanda Ibarra Gutiérrez, PhD Student, The University of Manchester.

The Nest pensions scheme, with auto-enrolment, has a main goal of serving millions of UK workers, mainly from small industries and low incomes, who did not previously have workplace pension schemes. It is important to understand 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 of millions of workers who have traditionally been excluded from pension schemes. This research seeks to understand whether the NEST population 𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 into different patterns of pension accumulation, and the potential paths across clusters for NEST members. NEST members are represented as a 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

Studying the structure of this network, can help us (1) understand the characteristics of the emerging groups; and (2) estimate how groups are potentially connected, which we can think of as a proxy for potential pathways to pension accumulation. The analysis thereby enables us to identify groups that seem to be at the highest risk of inadequate pension accumulation within Nest and also to identify members that have non-traditional accumulation.

Our guest speaker, Maria Fernanda Ibarra Gutiérrez is a PhD candidate in Data Analytics and Society at the The University of Manchester, where her research centres on studying the pension accumulation of low-income workers using data analytics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in actuarial science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her research is driven by an interest in using statistics and complex data analysis to explore and address social problems, with a particular focus on pensions, inequalities and gender issues.

Springboards safety nets and solidarities

The intergenerational dynamics of younger adults' housing careers in the UK

Younger adults are widely understood to be bearing the brunt of Britain’s ‘housing crisis’. In this challenging context, family background and intergenerational support practices are thought to have become increasingly influential factors in younger adults’ housing careers. These trends have major implications for social mobility and intergenerational transmissions of inequality over the life course.

At this seminar, Dr Rory Coulter will present and discuss selected findings from his research into family dynamics and housing in young adulthood. Rory will also explore how life course perspectives provide a valuable conceptual framework for making sense of how families matter for younger adults’ housing experiences.

Rory is a geographer interested in life course dynamics, housing and neighbourhoods as well as longitudinal research methods. In 2023 his book, Housing and Life Course Dynamics was published by Policy Press. Rory is currently an editor at the journal Housing Studies and acts as the Understanding Society study’s Topic Champion for Housing. At UCL his teaching spans population, urban and economic geography as well as quantitative research methods.

What's the impact of care on financial wellbeing?

With growing numbers of people providing support to family, friends and others, this scoping review, by Dr Maxine Watkins and Louise Overton, Director of CHASM - Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management, is timely.

You can download ‘𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: 𝗮 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗳 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘂𝗻𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 at https://lnkd.in/e6EhizF8.

While care-giving can bring fulfilment and meaning to peoples’ lives, it can negatively affect individuals’ financial wellbeing. This scoping review explores what is known about how unpaid carers experience and understand the financial consequences of providing care, with findings indicating that unpaid caring affects financial wellbeing in multiple, overlapping ways. There is a significant gap in the literature regarding whether, and how, individuals understand the future financial implications of unpaid care-giving, or whether longer-term financial consequences are considered when making decisions about care.

The Volunteer Trap: Older Women, Volunteering and Insecure Financial Futures

Volunteering is an important aspect of informal community care and is often associated with older people as a way to ‘give back’ or to maintain cultural capital and to enhance wellbeing.

However, for some older volunteers it may also be a pathway to work, particularly for people who have an altered life course through migration, redundancy, or health setbacks. To date little consideration has been given to older volunteers who are volunteering as a route into paid work. This paper reports on findings from the coproduced art research project Uncertain Futures which has explored the work narratives of 100 women over 50 who were either accessing work, in work or exiting work in Manchester. The women in this study were aged between 50 to early 80s, the majority were from minority ethnic backgrounds, with almost half involved in some form of voluntary work.

This paper will report on the experiences of women who are ‘trapped’ in volunteer roles, unable to translate this work experience into paid employment and the consequences that this has on their financial security. Though the women often found purpose and social connection through volunteering, this could be overshadowed by years of unsuccessful job hunting, and the lack of support to help them to return to paid work.

This presentation will not only highlight the individual and collective struggles of these women but also offer insights into the broader implications of an altered life course on one's future. Through this discourse, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by older volunteers and ignite a conversation on how to better support their aspirations for paid employment. Uncertain Futures serves as a crucial lens through which we can examine the intersection of volunteering and employment among older women and the resulting precarity. It compels us to reflect on the value we assign to voluntary work and the societal changes needed to ensure that such work is not a dead-end, but a stepping stone to a more secure and fulfilling futures.

Sarah Campbell is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University within the Department of Social Care and Social Work. She has a PhD from the University of Manchester. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist working in the field of social and cultural ageing. Her research interests are in everyday life, care, gender and social inequalities. Her work is underpinned by participatory methodologies and using creative methods to support the inclusion of marginalised voices within research.

Elaine Dewhurst is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Law at the University of Manchester and her research is mainly in the field of age discrimination law. She has a PhD in law from the National University of Ireland, Cork and completed a post doctoral fellowship in age discrimination law at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Germany. She is the senior expert on Age for the European Equality Law Network.

Uncertain Futures is a collaborative art and research study exploring inequalities in relation to both paid and unpaid work for women over 50 in Manchester.

Global employment trends in post-pandemic times

Professor Geeta Nair, gives a seminar on Indian perspectives on employment trends in post-pandemic times.

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted global employment trends, causing widespread job losses and transforming labour markets. This study analyses the changes in employment patterns worldwide since the onset of the pandemic, identifying the most affected sectors and demographic groups, and assessing the long-term implications of these shifts on the global economy. The research methodology involves analysing international labour market reports, national employment statistics, and surveys.

The findings reveal that the pandemic caused an estimated loss of 255 million full-time jobs globally in 2020, with sectors such as hospitality, sales, and personal services being hit the hardest. In contrast, high-skilled occupations in science, technology, and health saw job growth, indicating a shift towards more resilient job sectors. The study is based on the Minor Research Project awarded by the HSNC University in 2023 to study the employment trends in India, particularly Mumbai being the financial capital. The preliminary results from fieldwork and comparative analysis with secondary data demonstrate that the crisis has disproportionately affected women, young workers, and those in informal employment in the case of domestic workers, rickshaw drivers, and small businesses.

The study concludes that policymakers and employers must address these disparities and consider new approaches to employment, including potential changes to social welfare regimes and labour market policies, to navigate the post-pandemic landscape effectively to promote decent work and an inclusive society.

Professor Geeta Nair is a Professor and Head of Department of Business Economics at H. R. College of Commerce & Economics for over 3 decades, and also Director of Research Initiatives, Chair of Board of Studies in Business Economics, HSNC University, and Member of Board of Studies in Business Economics at University of Mumbai. She is the Centre Head of Ph. D. Centre in Business Economics and has successfully guided doctoral students.

Geeta was awarded the S.I.R. Fulbright Fellowship for 4 months at NJCU in August 2022 to start a new course on the Indian Economy and enrich the existing Economics syllabi by covering the developing countries’ perspective.

Dignity Not Debt

Join us for a conversation with Professor Chrystin Ondersma (Rutgers University) on American household debt from her new book Dignity Not Debt: An Abolitionist Approach to Economic Justice published by University of California Press

American households have a debt problem. The problem is not, as often claimed, that Americans recklessly take on too much debt. The problem is that US debt policies have no basis in reality.

In her book Ondersma debunks the myths that have long governed debt policy, like the belief that debt leads to prosperity or the claim that bad debt is the result of bad choices. In place of these stale narratives, Ondersma offers a flexible and reality-based taxonomy rooted in the internationally recognized principle of human dignity. The promise is that these new categories of debt—grounded in abolitionist principles— will revolutionize how policymakers are able to think about debt, both in the US and elsewhere.

The Gender of Capital

With speakers Céline Bessière, Professor of Sociology, Paris Dauphine University (PSL University) and Sibylle Gollac, Research Fellow in Sociology, National Center for Scientific Research in France

In many countries, property law grants equal rights to men and women. Why, then, do women still accumulate less wealth than men? Combining quantitative, ethnographic, and archival research, The Gender of Capital explains how and why, in every class of society, women are economically disadvantaged with respect to their husbands, fathers and brothers. The reasons lie with the unfair economic arrangements that play out in divorce proceedings, estate planning, and other crucial situations where law and family life intersect.

We argue that, whatever the law intends, too many outcomes are imprinted with unthought sexism. In private decisions, old habits die hard: families continue to allocate resources disproportionately to benefit boys and men. Meanwhile, the legal profession remains in thrall to assumptions that reinforce gender inequality. We marshal a range of economic data documenting these biases. We also examine scores of family histories and interview family members, lawyers, and notaries to identify the accounting tricks that tip the scales in favour of men.

Women across the class spectrum—from poor single mothers to MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos—can face systematic economic disadvantages in divorce cases. The same is true in matters of inheritance and succession in family-owned businesses. Moreover, these disadvantages perpetuate broader social disparities beyond gender inequality. The appropriation of capital by men has helped to secure the rigid hierarchies of contemporary class society itself.

The speakers

Céline Bessière is currently a Professor of sociology at Paris Dauphine University (PSL University) and a senior member at the Institut Universitaire de France. She is the author of a book on Cognac winegrowing family businesses (De génération en génération, Paris : Raisons d’Agir 2010).

Sibylle Gollac is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. In her PhD thesis, “La pierre de discorde”, she analyzed family real estate strategies in contemporary France.

Their research work is at the crossroads of several fields: economic sociology, sociology of law and justice, sociology of gender, class and family. They both co-authored The Gender of Capital

(Harvard University Press, 2023), a book that demonstrates the existence of a gender wealth gap in formally egalitarian societies and analyzes the social mechanisms that cause it within the family, as revealed in moments of marital breakdown and inheritance. In France, The Gender of Capital was recently adapted into a graphic novel with Jeanne Puchol (Paris, La Découverte/Delcourt, 2023). Céline and Sibylle are also co-authors of a book drawing on a vast research on family courts in France (Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des couples, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013; adapted into a graphic novel, by Baptiste Virot Casterman, 2020).

Understanding the Later Life Financial Wellbeing of UK BME Groups

An Online CHASM Seminar with speaker Pauline Gleadle, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the Open University

In this seminar, Pauline will draw on these varied interests to propose a qualitative methodology for exploring the later life financial position of different ethnic minorities within the UK. She argues that this is called for, given that much of the academic literature to date on UK BME groups’ saving via pensions fails to distinguish adequately between these different communities and their personal financial provision for later life. Importantly, such greater understanding has potential implications for both national and local government policy across a range of areas which Pauline would like to discuss with you towards the end of her presentation.

Pauline Gleadle is a Critical Accountant in terms of her research background, but she also has wider-ranging interests across the social sciences more generally.

Your Money, Your Life: experiences of young people's borrowing

Dr Lindsey Appleyard, Research Centre for Business in Society, Coventry University gives a seminar on young people's borrowing

Young people in the UK have been identified as having high levels of unsecured credit use, alongside low levels of financial wellbeing, and little resilience to protect them from financial shocks.  This matters because the use of credit can have implications for young people’s financial wellbeing and future financial decision-making as they transition toward independence.  

At this seminar, Lindsey Appleyard will share her research findings on young people’s (aged 18-24) personal experiences of borrowing and their use of unsecured credit across the UK. We will explore how young people viewed credit as an essential part of everyday life, due to a broader normalisation of credit in society and as a tool to manage their financial wellbeing. We also show how a series of ‘hackathons’ – participatory, solutions-focused workshops – helped inform young people to design effective and relevant solutions to support their financial wellbeing. This put young people at the centre of the decision-making process and allowed them to influence how their financial wellbeing should be best supported in relation to credit and borrowing.

Dr Lindsey Appleyard is an economic geographer with interdisciplinary research interests in financial geographies. Lindsey’s recent research has focused on reducing financial vulnerability. Through Lindsey’s networks and collaborations, her body of research aims to make a significant impact by influencing policy and practice to develop financially resilient communities. Since 2017, Lindsey has been successfully awarded over £900k of funding for research and impact from a range of sources, including UKRI, abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, Barrow Cadbury Trust. Lindsey has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and through broadcast, print, and social media, and Lindsey regularly engages with the public.