Irish Travellers face more deprivation than other people in Britain, data suggests

Young women from the Irish Traveller community in England and Wales are eight times as likely to have no qualifications as other young women, according to official data released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Friday.

Overall, Travellers and Gypsies are poorer, less healthy, die younger and are far more economically inactive than other people, according to the figures from the 2021 census in England and Wales, which paint a grim picture of the social conditions endured by Irish Travellers in Britain.

About 71,440 people in England and Wales ticked the box for “Gypsy or Irish Traveller” in the 2021 census, although this is considered an undershoot. Previous British government publications have estimated the population at anywhere up to 300,000 across all of the UK.

The Traveller Movement, which advocates for Gypsies, Roma and Irish Travellers in Britain, suggested the cropped figures are due to a “reluctance to disclose ethnicity due to fear of discrimination and victimisation, literacy or digital literacy barriers, [and] a generalised distrust of the state”.

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The biggest geographic congregations of members of the Traveller community are in the southeast of England, especially around Kent and the edges of London. Other large concentrations of Travellers are in the north of England in Doncaster, Leeds and Bradford, according to the census data.

More than one-fifth of the population live in caravans or mobile homes, according to the responses. A member of the non-Traveller population in England and Wales is four times as likely as a Traveller to own their own home. Meanwhile, Travellers are more than twice as likely to live in social housing.

The Traveller population is younger than other groups in society, with more than 45 per cent aged 25 or younger. But Travellers also have more health problems. One in eight Travellers describe themselves as being in “bad health”, which was more than twice as high as other people. Women Travellers are less healthy than men, according to the census responses.

“The poorer health [of Travellers] cannot be explained by age,” said the ONS.

The data shows that one in eight Traveller women aged in their early 40s do at least 50 hours per week of unpaid care work.

While almost 71 per cent of the total population of England and Wales describe themselves as employed or self-employed, that falls to 41 per cent for Travellers. The majority are in “elementary jobs” such as cleaning or postal work, skilled trades or work with machinery.

Almost 57 per cent of Travellers in England and Wales have no qualifications, compared to 18 per cent for the wider population. The disparity in qualifications peaks with Traveller women aged in their early 20s.

“There are huge inequalities faced by our communities when it comes to health, education and economic activity as well as an over-representation in the criminal justice system,” said John McCarthy, a trustee of the Traveller Movement. He called for targeted resources to address the issue.