Person- or place-based policies to tackle disadvantage? Not knowing what works

Abstract

This study reviews evidence of the effectiveness of policies introduced in Great Britain since 1997 to tackle employment, education and income disadvantage, focusing on policies that explicitly take account of people and places. While the Government has sought to tackle disadvantage across a number of fronts since 1997, person- and place-based policies have mostly developed separately and often in isolation from each other. This separation does not refl ect the relationships between places and the poverty and disadvantage of people who live in them. This study looks at evaluations of the policies targeted at people and places to draw out key messages about what works, comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of person- and place-based interventions.