One of the oft repeated claims in UK politics, are that there are families for whom three generations that have never worked. The quotes have been made by any number of politicians, most commonly Tories, but also Tony “Bush’s Poodle” Blaire.<\/p>\n
It turns out that no one can find any evidence that even one such family ever existed<\/a>:<\/p>\n This month I ran a workshop with a group of first year undergraduate sociology students at Teesside University (in the North East of England). Our students tend to be from working-class or lower-middle class backgrounds and often the first in their families to go to university. I\u2019d been invited to give an insight into a \u2018real life\u2019 research project, and I began by asking for responses and thoughts about some quotations:<\/span> \u2018Behind the statistics lie households where three generations have never had a job\u2019 (ex-British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 1997).<\/span> So this family appears to never have existed, but that didn’t stop various people, including the Smiler (Blair) from using it on the stump. <\/p>\n
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<\/span> \u2018\u2026on some deprived estates\u2026often three generations of the same family have never worked\u2019 (Iain Duncan Smith, 2009; now British government Minister for Work and Pensions).<\/span>
<\/span> \u2018To reintroduce the culture of work in households where it may have been absent for generations\u2019 (Universal Credit, Department of Work and Pensions, 2010; this is a document that introduces a very major overhaul of UK welfare payments).<\/span>
<\/span> \u2018\u2026there are four generations of families where no-one has ever had a job\u2019 (Chris Grayling, ex-Minister for Work and Pensions, 2011).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/span> The idea that there are families in the UK with three (or four, or five and even six have been claimed) generations where no one has ever had a job is a particularly powerful orthodoxy. It is often repeated, rarely questioned, becoming part of a taken for granted vernacular. I was struck by the students\u2019 comments. One said, \u2018well, it must be true if all these [people] are saying it\u2019. Another felt the same because \u2018they wouldn\u2019t say it unless there was loads of data to back it up\u2019. Simple ideas boldly spoken (and repeated) by people in authority can carry real weight.<\/span>
<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026
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But my colleagues and I are social scientists, so instead of relying on \u2018personal observations\u2019, Tracy Shildrick, Andy Furlong, Johann Roden, Rob Crow, and I began rigorous research<\/a> to see if there really were families like this. We have continued thinking, analysing, writing about, and presenting the complexities of the research material that we gathered since then. The research generated other questions, but, unusually for a sociological study, we found a clear and unequivocal answer to this first question: the existence of families where \u2018no one had worked for three generations\u2019 is highly unlikely.<\/span>
<\/span> We searched very hard to find such families. We chose two extremely deprived working-class neighbourhoods \u2013 in Glasgow and Middlesbrough, because we assumed that they were the sorts of places most likely to reveal this phenomenon. Despite deploying all the strategies and tactics we could think of (including financial inducements), we were unable to find any. <\/i>This does not mean that they do not exist. Some people believe in fairies or Yetis<\/a>, and one cannot prove<\/i> they do not exist. We can<\/i> say, however, that it is highly improbable that they do. Or, if they do, their numbers are infinitesimally small. Other research drew upon the best available secondary statistics and concluded that less than half of one per cent<\/i> of all workless households in the UK might have two<\/i> generations<\/i> where no one had ever had a job<\/a>. Households with three generations that have never worked are, logically, going to be far, far fewer in number than even this tiny fraction.<\/span>
<\/span> This was, actually, a quite predictable conclusion. A little socio-economic history helps. How long is \u2018three generations\u2019? Maybe sixty years, so back to the 1950s, or earlier. The proposition is that there are families where no one<\/i> has had a job since the 1950s. <\/i>The UK welfare state has become tougher and tougher over this period, particularly in the last few years. We have very tight \u2018conditionality rules\u2019 and \u2018activation tests\u2019; recipients of unemployment benefits must provide evidence of their worthiness for these on a weekly basis. It is difficult to imagine a person being able<\/i> to defraud the state for the whole of his\/ her working life <\/i>\u2013 and then<\/i> his\/ her son or daughter doing the same and then<\/i> his\/ her son or daughter after them, for sixty years.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n