Rural Disadvantage: reviewing the evidence’ pulls together existing contemporary evidence on disadvantage in rural England, providing an assessment of a range of social, economic and environmental causes of disadvantage.

This major baseline study explores the difference living in rural areas makes to being ‘disadvantaged’. It reviews evidence on what rural disadvantage is and why it occurs, and examines what the information tells us about how policy responses are working in rural areas.

Literature reviewed in the study was examined under 12 disadvantage headings, and focused around two key issues that research suggests makes the experience of disadvantage distinctly different in rural areas:

• Access to opportunity - identifying the distinctive issues for different types of participation
• Attitudes - exploring the views and perceptions of disadvantaged people, of rural communities and of ‘policy-makers’, about rural disadvantage

The study takes a people–perspective, exploring the factors that lead to inequalities in participation, rather than looking at information that relates to businesses and organisations.