New research by Oxford University suggests a disturbing trend of discrimination by employers
British people from Bangladeshi or Pakistani backgrounds are around three times as likely to be in poverty as their white British counterparts, according to new research. A briefing by the Centre for Social Investigation (CSI) at Nuffield College, Oxford finds that people from these particular backgrounds are also more likely to have a life-limiting illness or to live in overcrowded conditions.
The new research contributes to a growing picture of disillusionment for Britons of South Asian origin – last year the New Policy Institute found that 44 per cent of Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers living in London were being paid below the living wage.
According to the CSI, there has been great generational improvement in terms of education, and difficulties with the English language have ‘almost completely disappeared’ among second-generation migrants from Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African and Black Caribbean backgrounds.
However this attainment has not been matched by employment prospects, and ‘continued discrimination in the labour market…cannot be ruled out as a significant part of the explanation for their continuing disadvantage’.
People from Indian backgrounds, in contrast, have ‘largely closed the gap’.
Rates of poverty are 57 per cent for people of Pakistani and 46 per cent for people of Bangladeshi background – compared with 16 per cent for white British people. Data provided by the CSI shows that monthly personal earnings by this group average around 68 per cent of white earnings.
The briefing shows that Bangladeshi-origin Britons have the lowest number of rooms per person and the highest percentage of life limiting illness, both indicators of poverty.
The findings should be of extreme concern to the government, at a time when community cohesion has a direct impact on national security. Iqbal Wahhab OBE, chair of the CSI’s Advisory Board, says that the research ‘highlights a terrible social indictment’ and that Muslim communities alienated by economic deprivation are much more at risk of turning to crime – be that gang violence, theft, or, in a small number of cases, radicalisation.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
39 Responses to “British people with Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds are three times as likely to be in poverty”
Mike Stallard
Do not feed the trolls!
nielsc
There is a bottom everywhere. If you take Denmark as an example, it’s rather clear that the great influx of East European workers has decreased the chances of low skilled immigrants and fugitives from the Middle East and Africa ( primarily Somalia) getting a job. ( the same doesn’t apply for fugitives from Sri Lanka or Vietnam). Of course the danish school system is in a larger degree than the english based on North European middle class values ( responsibility for your own learning, which don’t fit all with a typical muslim background). But another problem is that many muslims isn’t geographically moveable. Young girls and men doesn’t move from their parents house. Whereby East Europeans drop in where the jobs are.
Leon Wolfeson
1. Because there are other factors at work, your beliefs can’t matter.
2. That’s your view, of course. You speak for yourself.
3. And yet you’re against the poor being able to educate themselves.
How, you ask, can universal education help people.
Well, gee!
Leon Wolfeson
Don’t starve yourself over this, it ain’t worth it!
Guest
Ah yes, Jews are whackos, as I talk about a claim *you* made. If it’s nonsense, it’s because your claim is nonsense.
You’re a capitalist, as you admit, as you try and claim your views don’t matter.
You’ve admitted you’re here to grandstand, and you are again, posting mere to show your Jewhate,
Go back to Monaco.