Poverty Flashcards
(12 cards)
Introduction: What is ‘Poverty’?
- Contested concept
* Poverty = living below a minimum standard of living
Employment - Undeserving poor
Employment - undeserving poor
Slum districts of London between 1840 and 1860’s - Henry Mayhew showed that employment opportunities were inequally distributed. Many people could only obtain casual or irregular work that didn’t pay enough to escape life of poverty.
Mayhew’s work saw distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor as between those who can’t work and who will not work.
Absolute / Subsistence Poverty
- Lanchester (2014) that there is no real poverty in the UK today.
- Seebhom Rowntree (1901) Poverty: A Study of Town Life: the ‘minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency’
‘a condition characterised by several deprivations of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also access to social services’
Absolute poverty
• World Bank, 2015: ‘extreme’ poverty = living on less than $1.90 (International) per day • Therefore no poverty in contemporary UK and Developed North…?
Definition is used by international organisations such as UN and world bank
Says you cannot afford the basic needs of life (food, clothing, shelter etc)
Absolute in the sense that its measured relative to a fixed standard of living, rather than the rest of the population
It defines “relative poverty” in comparison” to median incomes in the current year
This gives us a measure of poverty that’s constant over time
critics of absolute
- Defining poverty is not purely technical but a moral decision
- Donnison, 1982: viii: ‘To define poverty is to take a standpoint about our duties and rights as citizens’
Relative Poverty
Means that a person can’t afford an “ordinary living patter” excluded from the activities and opportunities that the average person enjoys
A household is in relative poverty if its income is below 60% of the median household income
Government wants to measure spending power, rather than earning power, so it counts incomes after taxes and benefits
All households are different, a household with one person needs less money to live comfortably, contrast to household with a couple and two children
Household incomes are “equivalised” in poverty statistics. They’re adjusted to take into account the number of adults and children who live there
Townsend (1974) - argue that poverty can be defined only in relative and never in absolute terms.
People live in poverty is their way of life is deprived relative to that customary in their society. Customary standards change over time , and so then poverty alters over time.
Townsend concluded that poverty must always be measured in relation to whatever standards of acceptability and unacceptability actually prevail in society.
To be deprived in a particular society - to live in poverty - is to be excluded from kind and level of living that is regarded by its members normal.
Cricts of Relative poverty
- Who determines what is a ‘necessity’?
- If median income falls so does the poverty line
- Poverty increases when living standards rise
- Hutton, 1999: ‘A TV is surely a vital part of today’s minimum living standards. The benchmark of inclusion keeps moving upwards as society grows richer’
Poverty as Life Chances
• 2016 Welfare Reform &; Work Act favored ‘life chances’ instead of poverty:
- children living in work-less household, family with problem debt; poor housing or a troubled area; an unstable family environment; proportion attending a failing school; household with parents who are in poor health households with addiction problems
Income Inequality Trends • Two post WWII eras:
(i) 1940s ‐ mid/late 1970s ‐ slowly increasing income equality
(ii) late 1970s to present ‐ rapid increase in inequality, with short periods of stabilisation
• 2007/08: inequality greatest since records began in 1961
Townsend - UK
Townsend showed that 7.3% of British households were below the poverty line in 1968. A further 23.3% were living in marginal poverty with incomes only just above the income-support level and were in constant danger of falling below it
Townsend saw poverty as a condition of relative deprivation which measured on indicators; without a week’s holiday; going without a cooked meal in last fortnight; not having exclusive use of toilet, bath or cooker.
A family of four with an annual income of £2,500 or more in 1967 might experience 2 types of deprivation but similar family with annual income of £600 likely suffer from five or more deprivations.
International Income Inequality
Gini Coefficient
A statistical measure of the degree of variation represented in a set of values, used in analysing income inequality
EU average Gini Coefficient = 30 approx
UK Gini Co-efficient = 34
Scotland Gini Co-efficient = 35.8
International examples
3 EU countries have higher levels of inequality
Latavia 37.7
Romania 36
Bulgaria 35.9
poverty absolute in UK - stats
Absolute poverty has fallen slightly in the UK over the past 10 years, the most recent estimates show another small fall to the lowest recorded rate.
For example, 1994-1995 the percentage of individuals in absolute poverty in the UK was just below 40% before housing costs, however in 2016-2017 the percentage fell to just above 10%
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