Unsettling racial disparities in rates of financial difficulty in the UK have been highlighted by new data from the Center on the Dynamics of Ethnicity at The University of Manchester.
Nearly 40% of respondents with backgrounds including Arab, Any Other, and Mixed White and Black African reported having financial troubles in the three months prior to the COVID-19 epidemic. This compares with 23% of people from the White British group.
The COVID-19 epidemic made it more difficult for people from practically all racial and ethnic groupings, including White Britons, to manage their household finances. But people from some ethnic groups recorded a particularly sharp rise in rates of financial difficulty, including people from the Chinese, Any other Black background, Black Caribbean, Roma and Gypsy/Traveler groups.
“People from ethnic minority backgrounds were already facing higher rates of financial difficulty, and the fallout from the pandemic compounded this situation. Our dataset is evidence of very real ethnic inequalities. This is the kind of data we need to build into our pandemic recovery strategies if we want a fairer society,” said Professor James Nazroo.
Over 45% of those of Arab, Any Other Black, Any Other Mixed, Any Other background, or Roma ancestry reported being in financial hardship during this time.
We are delighted to provide free research access to CODE’s EVENS Survey through the UK Data Service. These new data are a first in providing detailed evidence on how ethnicity shapes the lives of people across the U.K. We welcome the insights they give researchers and policy developers to help enable greater ethnic equality in the future.
Gemma Hakins
Michaela Šťastná, from The University of St Andrews, said, “Importantly, our data uncover inequalities experienced by people from certain ethnic groups who are missing from, or invisible in, the Census or other national surveys, especially some of the smaller ethnic groups such as Roma, Gypsy/Traveler, Arab and ‘Other’ ethnic groups. People from Roma and Gypsy/Traveler backgrounds are one of the groups often missing from survey data. Yet this new dataset shows that they face the highest levels of socioeconomic deprivation: they much more likely to have no educational qualifications, less likely to have better paid jobs and have some of the highest rates of financial hardship.”
Professor Nissa Finney, from the University of St Andrews, said, “We are excited to be able to share our unique dataset. It is a one-of-a-kind survey which goes into more detail and more depth on the experiences of people from ethnic minority groups in Britain than any other survey. We encourage all researchers and policymakers to access it and use it to reduce ethnic inequalities.”
Gemma Hakins, acting director of data access, UK Data Service, said, “We are delighted to provide free research access to CODE’s EVENS Survey through the UK Data Service. These new data are a first in providing detailed evidence on how ethnicity shapes the lives of people across the U.K. We welcome the insights they give researchers and policy developers to help enable greater ethnic equality in the future.”
The new dataset was obtained from the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS), which was the largest investigation into racial and religious disparities in Britain at the time of the pandemic. The whole dataset for EVENS, which tracks patterns of racial and ethnic inequality in education, employment, housing, and income, is freely accessible via UK Data Service.
