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March 2014: that's the month when economic experts expect Britain can celebrate having returned to its national income peak achieved in the first quarter of last year.

Similarly, other economists tell us it will take about five years for employment to return to its boom years peak.

We know this because of a compendium of research about recession which has been published today by the Economic and Social Research Council.

This organisation spends more than £200m of public money each year on commissioning academic research. Lots of its moola goes into research that has nothing to do with the economy.

This week, for instance, ESRC-funded St Andrews University research taught us that that deep voices frighten young girls but become attractive to teenage girls as they get older, and that younger and older girls prefer boys with more feminine faces. (Perhaps that's obvious or a waste of money, but it could be useful to someone in the advertising industry.)

Anyway, back to recession. Much of the research has already been published, but in compiled format, it provides breadth to what we understand about recession now and what we can learn from recessions past. Some of the more interesting, significant and unexpected bits:

* House prices may fall for three more years. With fewer houses on the market, potential buyers reckon it will be harder to find their dream home, so they drop out of the market. Result: further declines in price.

* With reduced house-based asset wealth as collateral for loans, entrepreneurs find it harder to finance their plans.

* After studying the deep decline of the south of England's economy in the 1990s recession, followed by a steep bounce back, it is reckoned that the resilience of the south can be a feature of this cycle as well: "There is unlikely to be a fundamental long-run shift in Britain's economic geography."

* This has not been the middle-class recession that many predicted (me included, I seem to remember). Despite financial services being at the heart of the downturn, it is low-educated, low-skilled workers whose employment prospects have suffered most.

* Unemployment in a recession can have long-term implications. The experience of unemployment can damage people's chances of keeping a job once they find one.

* Young men from advantaged backgrounds, who did well at school but who were unemployed for a year or more in the 1980s recession, were much less likely to be high earners, in a professional job or own their homes in 1991.

* Those who leave school with few qualifications during a recession often shuttle between government programmes, inactivity and unemployment, while those who can are more likely to stay in school and continue in full-time education. That could help the government hit targets for staying-on.

* However those with degrees who are leaving university into the teeth of an unemployment surge could see losses to their earnings over their entire working lives.

There are social impacts beyond the economic:

* People who lose their jobs in Britain increase the chances that they will lose their spouse or partner. And a woman losing her job is increasingly likely to lead to partnership dissolution the longer the partnership has lasted.

* Unexpected falls in house prices can damage family stability. They're particularly destabilising for the relationships of young couples with low family income, high mortgage debt and dependent children.

* Unemployment increases the risk of depression, and it's worse still if there are home repossession or heavy mortgage burdens. There's also a steep decline in happiness ratings when people lose their jobs. Only a fifth of that decline is down to income loss. The rest comes from intangibles, such as loss of status, self-esteem or lost social networks.

And what about business?

* Evidence from the US recession shows employment falling much faster than output. This seems to be because information and aggressive management practices are letting firms cut staffing and introduce more efficient systems.

* In the return to growth, research shows firms should not cut their way out of the recession. Growth doesn't come by competing on cost, so it's essential to offer more valuable products and services.

* Those businesses that were good at innovation before the recession benefit from that during the recession, being more open to change and adaptation.

* In competition policy, recessions provide opportunities for anti-competitive mergers and market concentration. It is reckoned that suspension of competition policy in the USA during the 1930s extended the Great Depression for seven years. (That looks like a lesson for those considering the regulation of Lloyds Banking Group, which took advantage of recession conditions to get permission for precisely that kind of merger.)

* For every 100 jobs lost in a country with high levels of migration, there are 10 fewer immigrants - but recession also leads to higher anti-immigrant sentiment.

* While international government aid budgets tend to suffer with a downturn, individuals tend to maintain their level of charitable giving through the tough times.