Thriving or surviving: Understanding the geography of financial precarity in Great Britain

Ye, Zi ORCID: 0000-0001-5190-5211 and Singleton, Alex (2026) Thriving or surviving: Understanding the geography of financial precarity in Great Britain Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 125. p. 102399. ISSN 0198-9715, 1873-7587

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Abstract

Financial precarity, the state of economic insecurity characterised by unpredictable employment and declining social protection significantly impacts cognitive functioning, emotional stability and social inclusion. This condition stems from multiple interconnected factors: poor quality and unpredictable work, unmanaged debt, insecure asset wealth and insufficient financial resource. Despite extensive research on financial precarity's individual impacts, its geographical distribution and associated social-spatial inequalities remain poorly understood. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a new geodemographic classification of financial precarity across Great Britain. Our classification system uses small-area measurements encompassing employment patterns, income levels, asset holdings, debt obligations, and lifestyle characteristics at the neighbourhood level. By mapping financial precarity at a fine spatial scale, this research reveals how economic vulnerability varies across different localities, highlighting the uneven geography of financial insecurity between rural and urban areas, city centres and peripheries, coastal and inland communities, and how the classification groups are interwoven to the variegated patterns in and around major urban areas. This small-area approach provides sufficient detail to identify spatial patterns while enabling comparisons between local areas, offering new insights into the geographic dimensions of economic precarity in contemporary Britain.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Financial precarity, Geodemographic classification, Household finance, Spatial inequalities, Great Britain
Divisions:	Faculty of Science & Engineering Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Environmental Sciences Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Environmental Sciences > Geography and Planning
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	12 Jan 2026 08:35
Last Modified:	13 Jun 2026 00:48
DOI:	10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2026.102399
Open Access URL:	https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3196530
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