Identity Economics

"Yes, this is just out and to be frank I am only halfway through it. But it is a completely new idea, which, in essence, says that one effect of being in an increasingly liberal and affluent society is that aspects of identity that previously didn’t seem to matter that much to economists are consciously influencing our behaviour. This is most significant when it comes to gender: that is to say that women are increasingly conscious of making choices about what they do and how because they are women. For example, working part time. So gender identity is influencing economic choices in a way they haven’t in previous generations in quite this way. In the past economists didn’t really take these motivations into account. The authors point out that immigrants increasingly make a choice about where they live and work to be close to other people like them. In the past it happened to a certain extent because there were no other options, but now it is more conscious. If you look among quite well-off communities like East African Asians, you would think that as they became more affluent they would start to disperse throughout the population, but in fact the reverse is happening. If you look at Northwood or Pinner in North London, some parts of these areas have become concentrated groups of very affluent Asian families – the temple is close by, they will send their children to the same private schools. These families have a choice and they are choosing to cluster with people like themselves. “My job is essentially about trying as best you can to detach people’s life chances and their destiny from their origins, so that where you are born doesn’t determine where you die.” I think this has a very clear implication for what happens at the other end of the social scale. In the work I do, but also in the way government is trying to tackle educational failure, we have got to take this on board as we think about how to pick certain groups up off the floor. We thought for a very long time that you could interpret the failure of Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean and Pakistani children in education as racial in origin. Then we realised that some white children were failing just as badly. Now, famously, we know that white boys on free school meals are probably, next to gypsies and travellers, the worst performing group. What’s that all about? Well, it probably means that something we have been interpreting as governed by racial factors is probably economic in origin instead. These three groups are marked by a failed relationship with work. Most families have increased their wealth for the last 20 to 25 years by the fact that both parents work. In Afro-Caribbean families, typically only one parent works; in Pakistani families, typically the father works but the mother may not even speak English and therefore can’t work. And the white families we are most worried about are marked either by the fact that only one parent is working, or none, or even that no one in the family has worked for years and years. So something that we have been interpreting racially is actually an economic phenomenon. But my guess is the way you tackle it may have to be governed by racial factors. It is an interesting, complicated and difficult relationship between economics and culture and identity – but that’s why I find it so fascinating."