Poverty, Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood:Studying the area bases of social exclusion

Area-based polices have become a significant part of the new LabourGovernment’s approach to tackling social exclusion. This paper reviewsthe long-running debate about whether area-based policies can make asignificant impact on poverty and social exclusion. There is a strongtradition of academic work that argues that this is a misguided strategy.The authors argue that recent work, both in the US and the UK, suggeststhat there may be causal factors at work which derive from area-basedproblems that suggest area-based solutions. However, too little isunderstood about what these factors are and how they might beaddressed. Deeper local studies are required to tease out these effects.The paper then goes on to describe how the authors have gone aboutchoosing twelve areas for particular study. In the course of doing so,much has been learned about the characteristics of the most deprivedareas in the country and where they are.[...]