Which place-based policies would be most effective in levelling up the life chances of young people living in coastal towns, to the rest of the UK?
This project examines the ways in which growing up in a Coastal Town can impact on young people’s life chances – that is, their likelihood of having good outcomes in adulthood in terms of education, work, and health/wellbeing. Coastal towns have attracted a lot of attention in recent UK policy debates, and these discussions often raise concerns about the future of young people in these towns, largely because of the limited educational and employment opportunities. Despite this, there is very little research on the impact of growing up in Coastal Town on young people’s life chances. This project seeks to address these gaps by using UKHLS data sets in two key ways. First, the UKHLS youth self-completion data set will be linked to Coastal Town residence, and selected environmental indicators hypothesized to be related to reduced life chances. Second, this new data set will be linked to the main adult sample to examine (a) whether residing in a Coastal Town in late childhood/early adolescence is associated with reduced life chances (good education, good work and good health) in young adulthood, (b) test the hypothesis that the four aspects of adolescents’ area of residence (economic, educational, built and social) independently explain associations between residence in a Coastal Town and adverse life chances in adulthood after inclusion of covariates. The findings from these analyses can bring new insights to policy debates on how to ‘Level Up’ and regional inequalities, as well as longer-standing discussions about equal opportunities to life chances and health inequalities.
Outputs
Emily T. Murray, Avril Keating, Claire Cameron, Rachel Benchekroun, Sam Whewall, Cara Booker, Stephen Jivraj, Residence in coastal communities in adolescence and health in young adulthood: An 11-year follow-up of English UKHLS youth questionnaire respondents., Health & Place, Volume 87, 2024, 103239, ISSN 1353-8292, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2024.103239.
