An important new study analysing data gathered from millions of bank customers’ accounts showed that people who bet even small amounts are more likely to face financial difficulties and unemployment. According to the results of the study, people who spend more on gambling die easier.
The study, which provided a report considered the largest of its kind that has been so far carried out in the UK, was aimed at tracking the links between gambling spending and problems experienced by British customers. It involved 6.5 million customers of the Lloyds Banking Group that took part in the research over seven years.
Academics at Oxford and Warwick universities who led the study found that the chance of taking a payday loan, missing a mortgage payment or being pursued by debt collectors got bigger the more a person gambled. Still, scientists said no longer-term links were found between gambling and job loss and mortality levels.
The results of the research will probably raise even more serious concerns about the volume of gambling company profits generated by people facing financial problems. The UK Government has already put the gambling sector under scrutiny amid an ongoing review that could result in a stricter regulatory regime for the industry.
Financial Harm Related to Players’ Gambling Habits Intensity
So far, the abovementioned research has provided the most detailed information on how the £14.5 billion generated by the UK Gambling industry from players on an annual basis can transform into real gambling-related harm for customers.
The results of the study showed that the chances fo customers facing financial harm increased with the intensity of players’ gambling habits. They were found to have considerably increased once a person started spending at least 3.6% of their monthly expenses on it, or about £91.37 for the average household.
Once players started spending so much on gambling, they were about 33% more likely to miss a due mortgage payment, 22% more likely to use an overdraft they have not planned, as well as 19% more likely to take a payday loan, according to the results of the study. Researchers also revealed that so-called high-spending gamblers (people spending £1 in every £10 to gambling) were twice as likely to miss their due mortgage payment than people who did not gamble at all.
As mentioned above, scientists from the Oxford and Warwick universities also traced bank customers’ gambling expenditures over seven years, taking into account the increased rates of disability, unemployment and considerably increased mortality levels of so-called heavy gamblers. The study does not prove that those results are necessarily caused by gambling, but the results show that the higher spending on betting, the more hambling-related harm faced by the customer.
Another trend that was caught by scientists’ long-term monitoring was that gambling spending can grow very quickly but it takes a lot more time to diminish.
The UK gambling sector has been trying to play down its negative impact on society by relying on figures from not very regular digital health surveys of the National Health Service (NHS). Anti-gambling campaigners, however, have insisted that such studies have been mostly relying on figures accumulated by self-reporting gamblers, which made them not much reliable.
- Author
Daniel Williams
