Tackling London’s Household Debts Problem - CASE Report 154 - Executive summary

The first part of the report uses data from wave 13 of Understanding Society (the largest longitudinal household survey in the UK) to compare the degree of household over-indebtedness and problem debt in London and the UK. [...] On the one hand, the results show that a slightly lower proportion of Londoners hold financial debt than in the UK overall and that the median level of financial debt is also lower in London than in the UK overall. [...] The difference in the mean and median wealth holdings reflects the fact that financial debt is more unequal in London than in the UK overall. [...] Comparisons of the distribution of the highly over-indebted population as identified by the composite measure constructed based on Understanding Society, with the distribution of the population who seek debt advice can be used by different debt advice agencies to determine the reach of their services to harder to reach groups. [...] The finding that for some groups who are under-represented in the group of people who seek debt advice, the gap in reach is larger in London than in the UK overall , may reflect either that reaching these groups is more difficult in London than in other parts of the UK, or that debt advice needs are too high to be met by available supply.