Public housing as a barrier to long‐distance migration

A substantial literature has developed that has considered the relationship between migration and tenure in Britain. It has been argued that while those moving into council housing are more likely to move over short distances than those moving into owner occupied housing, administrative controls restrict population mobility into council housing over long distances. Others have criticised this assumption, maintaining that those resident in council housing are typically individuals who are less likely to migrate over long distances, regardless of the administrative restrictions imposed upon them. Accordingly, it is important to control for individual characteristics before the effects of tenure on mobility may be determined. In this study, data have been extracted from the 1991 Sample of Anonymised Records to assess the impacts of tenure on long‐distance migration compared with short‐distance migration. Logit models are used to control for the effects of a wide range of socio‐economic variables, allowing the independent impact of tenure to be identified. It is shown that long‐distance migrants are less likely to move into council housing than other tenures, but it is argued that this does not support the assumption that the sale of council housing will necessarily increase labour mobility.