Ethnicity, low income and work
Key points
- The proportion of people living in poverty (the "poverty rate") varies considerably between ethnic groups. Among London's Indian population, it is no higher than among the White population, but it is twice as high among Black Africans and three times as high among Bangladeshis. About two-thirds of London's Bangladeshi population live in low-income households.
- The combination of a much higher risk of low income for people from ethnic minorities and the high ethnic minority population in London means that over half of all people in poverty in London are from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) backgrounds.
- Work rates among BME groups in London are lower than for White British. About 20% of White British working-age adults in London do not work, compared to 60% of Bangladeshi and 40% of Pakistani adults.
- The majority of women of working age living in London, but born in Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan, are not working.
- Low pay is much more common among Pakistani and Bangladeshi employees than White or Black Caribbean employees.
- The high poverty rates experienced by most BME groups can only partly be accounted for by their generally lower work rates. In particular, just a third of the 'excess' poverty experienced by London's Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations can be accounted for by the much lower work rates among both men and women. Other factors such as low pay are critical.
Find out more about Ethnicity, low income and work by visiting the indicators in this section, listed on the right.
London is the most diverse city in the UK. It is also true that across the UK, people from BME backgrounds are more likely to be in poverty. It is therefore crucial to analyse poverty from the perspective of ethnicity. However, there are some real challenges.
Even in London, with its diverse population, some of these ethnic groups are very small. The analysis on this website uses only those official ethnic categories with large enough sample sizes to make the data reliable. These are: White British, White Other, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African and Black Caribbean.
Even these groupings hide substantial variation. For instance, Black African includes people from English-speaking countries as well as people from French-speaking countries. Moreover, using a nationality-based definition means that cultural differences within nations are ignored.
In using this nationality-based definition, we must bear in mind that ethnicity and nationality are not the same thing. In this site, we have used the ethnic group 'Bangladeshi', for instance, to include people born in the UK of Bangladeshi heritage &ndash and most likely born in London – as well as people born in Bangladesh.
Relevant Indicators
Glossary
BME:
Black & Minority Ethnic
Ethnicity:
characteristics of a group with distinctive cultural, linguistic and/or religious ties
Official ethnic classifications:
The current official classification – used in the census and in many of the official datasets used in this research – is based on the following 16-way division:
- White, comprising White British, White Irish, and White Other
- Asian or Asian British, comprising Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Other Asian
- Black or Black British, comprising, Black Caribbean, Black African, and Black Other
- Chinese, and Other
- Mixed, comprising White and Black Caribbean, White and Black African, White and Asian, and Any Other Mixed
In some of the low income analysis, White British and White Other are grouped together to enable comparisons over time, as the White Other group was only introduced in the relevant dataset in 2001. Moreover, these definitions assign an ethnicity to the household, rather than the individuals in the household, based on the ethnicity of the head of the household.
The 'Other' and 'Mixed' groups are not analysed either collectively or separately on grounds of sample reliability.