Neither in Britain, nor in its sister states in the EU and OECD, nor indeed globally, is concern for the downward trajectories of many rural economies a new phenomenon. In the rapidly urbanising, developing world, rural depopulation has been seen as an almost inevitable correlate of national economic progress. For many of these countries, there is an at least tacit acceptance of rural areas as ‘backward’. In the advanced economies, where counter-urbanisation has been much more the norm for at least four decades, low-wage rural populations are seen to experience two sorts of problem – differential capacity for economic growth with the decline of fragile areas; and dual economies, where locals’ buying power is outstripped by that of commuters or in-migrants. In this chapter we look at the economic base of the rural housing question. A central argument of the chapter is that perspectives on current rural housing systems are bound up with the fate of rural economies and views on the purposes of Britain's countrysides.

‘It's the economy, stupid!’

Stated in his successful 1992 US presidential campaign, Bill Clinton's aphorism is as self-evidently applicable in thinking about a society's material standards of living, including its housing systems, as it is in thinking about its members’ political choices. For, since the 1920s, real income growth has fuelled the satisfaction of increasing housing aspirations both qualitatively (more private housing of higher space standards being the clearest indices) and quantitatively (through building rates that have almost kept pace with increased rates of household growth). In the same period, there has also been a series of profound sectoral shifts in the macro-economy.

The first of these is the continuous growth of private service industries, such as banking, tourism and recreation, and public service industries in the welfare areas of health care, education and the full gamut of local government functions. The second shift is that of manufacturing industries, with a rise in fortunes until the 1950s succeeded by a fall from the mid-1960s. This became particularly acute in the late 1970s’ to mid-1990s’ ‘deindustrialisation’, and is being compounded in the late 2000s by the effects of the deepest economic recession for 30 years. Although the term ‘deindustrialisation’ has been used in a general sense, in reality, it applied mainly to heavier industries.