Feeling the credit crunch: The intergenerational impact of problem debt, 1980 to the present

Feeling the Credit Crunch will comprehensively connect lived experiences of problem debt and mental health to changing welfare logics and cultural discourses of credit use in Britain since 1980. Through intergenerational participatory workshops, oral histories and archival research, the project will generate a new evidence base to drive more integrated policy responses to problem debt and mental health in the present. From 1980, the liberalisation of consumer credit facilitated a credit boom. In less than a decade, levels of problem debt – characterised by the inability to meet credit commitments – soared across Britain. As access to consumer credit expanded, state welfare support contracted, and personal debt became an essential means by which some families maintained a basic standard of living. Contemporary research demonstrates a growing awareness of the effects of indebtedness on mental health amidst ongoing cost of living crises, but in what ways is this relationship reciprocal, and how has it been experienced across generations against the backdrop of shifting political, welfare and cultural climates since 1980? Only by understanding the lived interconnections between problem debt and mental health in the longer term can we begin to address issues that continue to affect families, healthcare and the economy today.