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Personal insolvency rates vary considerably across local areas of England and Wales but the reasons for this have barely been explored. This paper presents an empirical study of the factors determining variations in personal insolvency rates in 2006 utilising newly available data. The results suggest that a number of economic and demographic factors are important including income, social benefits, age, occupation, public-sector and armed forces employment and level of local entrepreneurship. Significant spatial autocorrelation is evident in the dataset and three sub-regional clusters of local authorities are identified; one in the South West is characterised by adjacent areas with a high insolvency rate and two others in Wales and the North West that are characterised by low insolvency rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data for over 40 variables relating to all the towns in England and Wales with populations of over 50,000 in 1966 and 1971 have been subjected to component analysis. Cluster analysis was then used on the component scores. The objective was to identify the most influential factors which differentiate between the populations of the towns. Details of the construction of a socioeconomic index are given, and this paper investigates in particular the relationship between such an index and car ownership rates. The changes in the travel to work mode over the 5-year period are described. Individual towns with extreme values on each variable are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]