Housing conditions and household characteristics: what (and where) really matters? Insights into the Manchester and Salford contexts

This study examines the link between housing conditions and household characteristics, focusing primarily on socio-economic status. It employs a quantitative approach on two levels: micro-level, utilizing data on households and dwellings, and aggregate-level, scrutinizing small contiguous census areas (LSOAs). Data from the 2019 English Housing Survey are adopted in the micro-level step. The variable chosen as a proxy for housing vulnerability is ‘Decent home criterion not met’, which classifies dwellings in three categories: decent homes, non-decent due to thermal comfort issues, and non-decent due to other problems. The latter includes homes in poor repair, lacking modern facilities, or posing health and safety risks (as defined in the Category 1 hazards of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System). Our findings reveal significant disparities in living conditions among different socio-economic groups, with small employers, self-employed workers and those in routine or manual jobs more likely to inhabit non-decent homes compared to their managerial or professional counterparts. These relationships persist even after controlling for covariates such as tenure, household composition and age of the reference member. In addition, we extend our analysis to the aggregate level, integrating the 2019 Indicator of Multiple Deprivation and 2021 census data. This step enables us to explore the relationship between housing conditions and area-level characteristics, providing granular insights at the city level for Manchester and Salford. This two-level approach allows us to validate (or refute) the results at the micro level and understand the local contingencies and key factors that explain housing vulnerability in different contexts.