Austerity as Reproductive Injustice in England
Venue
Practice Suite, CMBDescription
RTC Talking Methods Seminar with Dr Laura Sochas
Qualitative research and feminist theory scholarship have linked austerity cuts in the UK to constraints on Reproductive Justice and infringements on the right to have children and parent with dignity, particularly for poorer and racialised communities. However, the impact of public funding cuts on income inequalities in the probability of having a(nother) birth remains unclear.
In this paper, we use Understanding Society data and individual, local authority, and year fixed effects to understand how locally-differentiated cuts in council spending have affected household income inequalities in the probability of having a(nother) birth from 2009 to 2019 in England. Preliminary findings indicate that the poorest income tercile is more negatively affected than the richest income tercile, particularly in terms of the transition to first birth. Non-white respondents in the poorest tercile also suffer the most severe effects, compared to richer non-white respondents and to the white poorest tercile. Finally, unequal effects by household income appear only for those who are employed, and not for the unemployed or the inactive.
We interpret these findings as evidence of Reproductive Injustice: a government policy of austerity constrained poorer, non-white people’s rights to the resources that would have enabled them to parent in safe and healthy environments, leading them to decrease their probability of having a child.