Putting poverty into perspective
by Matt Barnes
Poverty is in the spotlight again as one of the factors linked with the recent rioting in Britain's towns and cities. But what does poverty look like in the UK at the start of the 21st century? We're pleased to announce that in collaboration with Demos, we’ve recently won funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to conduct a significant and ambitious programme of work that will produce a new measure of poverty.
Over time, poverty in the UK has been defined and talked about differently by the various political traditions – but overwhelmingly the focus has been on using income to measure poverty. We know, from surveys such as the Family Resources Survey, that around a fifth of the UK population live in households below the 60 per cent median low-income threshold. This is the official 'poverty' measure and equates to about £250 per week for a couple with no children (before they’ve paid their housing costs).
This ‘relative’ approach to measuring poverty is useful for seeing how the poorest members of society are doing in relation to others. However, the criticisms of an income-based poverty measure are well established. Such a measure doesn't capture the lived experience of poverty in all its complexity, particularly the interactions between people’s debts, financial worries, housing problems and neighbourhood deprivation. Poverty is also linked to educational, health and social opportunities and for many it’s the cumulative experience of poverty which has the greatest impact on their quality of life.
A predominantly income-based definition of poverty has an additional weakness – it is poorly understood by the public and policy makers. As research by Demos demonstrates, a description of having “below 60 per cent of median income” cannot be translated into real life circumstances or visualised. In short, no one (not even those experiencing it) knows what having less than 60per cent of median income “looks like” in real life terms.
Our project is about understanding and identifying the different combinations of economic problems that people in poverty face - and creating measures that reflect these experiences. These new measures will be more recognisable to the public, including people living in poverty themselves, and enable better informed policy making.
The research that underpins this new poverty measure will combine statistical analysis of the new Understanding Society data set (led by myself), with extensive qualitative work with those in poverty and practitioners at a local level (led by my colleague Gareth Morrell). Demos will be evaluating the policy implications of our findings, and developing and piloting a toolkit which will enable our analysis to be used by front-line practitioners and policy makers in tackling poverty in a more nuanced way. As well as providing a national picture of multi-dimensional poverty in the UK, the research will be used to develop a toolkit for local authorities, MPs, and charities – which can be used to identify people living in poverty and help tackle the unique set of disadvantages they face.
This study will change the narrative around poverty as much as the policy and practice set up to tackle it. First findings will be available in the spring of 2012 and you can follow the progress of the project here, or contact myself or Claudia if you'd like any further information.
SForeman
The cumulative effects of poverty - in urban areas a great many people on low incomes are housed in old blocks of flats with no acoustic insulation or glazing in areas with the highest air and noise pollution. More wealthy people tend to live in better quality structures with better sound insulation, and can more easily have weekends or longer in greener, cleaner areas (second homes, hotel breaks, etc). The poorest in society, at least in urban areas, are often housed in cheaper, old blocks of flats that are much more porous to noise and air pollution, and do not have second homes or the money for holidays. Noise damages health, even if sleep is not consciously disturbed, and living 24/7 in levels of noise and air pollution is a recognised and serious health risk. City social housing is often on or adjacent to busy roads, with large deliveries being made at all hours of the night, or by main rail routes (noise, diesel pollution). This was and is the less costly land, the brownfield sites, where social housing continues to be located. It is frequently cheaply built with no internal sound insulation against neighbour noise. Often there are few or no local parks, and greenery has been shown to be beneficial to health, and to reduce stress.
The Understanding Society research included a section on sleep without listing noise as a possible cause, and one on the local environment, but does not seem to give sufficient importance to the poor location and quality of housing as one of the cumulative effects of poverty.
Or to put it another way, try 15 years of being trapped in social housing in an ancient block of flats with no defence against the street vacuum cleaners that howl past for ten minutes every hour or so day and night, delivery vehicles and enormous waste vehicles too numerous to count, frequent road repair works always through the night, and the air pollution and ambient noise levels always above the WHO health guideline levels.
This ever increases, with new developments that bring need for more frequent cleaning machines visits, more deliveries, and so-on. In the real world the quality of life of social housing residents is more easily ignored when developments causing more noise and air pollution are put before planning committees, or when local authorities themselves want a location for noise-generating facilities. Hence some of the feeling of powerlessness.
Then there are other aspects of the local environment to consider - living in an area that is grimey and littered, graffitied and grey, where the children look pinched and white and being mugged is a very real possibility feels very different from living in an affluent urban 'village' with tree-lined streets, quaint specialist delicatessens and nice little independent upmarket cafes.
The availability of affordable and healthy food is another aspect of life in poverty to consider. At benefits level shopping can involve a long trek through those grey streets, hunting down the special offer loss leader in each supermarket. This takes a lot of time. For a poor working single parent this is just so much harder. Added to collecting children (maybe from schools/childcare in different locations), it makes it impossible to spend 'quality time' with children or to supervise their homework as well as do the cooking and housework.
Working is expensive, especially for single parents. There are respectable clothes to be bought and maintained, and often there is no time for shopping for and preparing the cheapest or more healthy food or other essentials. The lower NHS charges are lost, dentists may become unaffordable; there is no time to walk to work and fares to pay instead.
There are some other problems with the Understanding Society questionnaires that suggest it will not reveal the complexities of poverty. Take the environmental activity section, which asks if the subject would be willing to pay more for environmentally-friendly products. Personally I hate questions like this. How to answer it? I am not prepared to pay more for the more environmentally friendly products simply because I cannot afford to, like many of the people I know. Not because I don't want to buy them. Willing but unable, and there is no box for that answer.
In fact I will soon have to stop recycling because the only nearby recycling bins are to be taken away - the building they are in front of is to be redeveloped into an upmarket bijou hotel and the owners do not want ugly black bins nearby. The social housing estate residents do not want a hotel with it's stream of noisy and polluting delivery and waste vehicles, taxis and wheeled suitcases being trailed behind it's clients, and the restaurant open to the public from 7am to 11pm seven days of the week. But the local council, local major landowner, and the amenity society (many business members, committees drawn from the wealthier part of the neighbourhood) do want a hotel. So we are having a hotel, instead of housing.
What is needed is a really good set of quality of life measures that will properly reveal the complexities of living in poverty, including all the constraints and losses of small freedoms that come with it. So much is unaffordable, not accessible or simply forbidden when you are poor and living in social housing.
Rob the crip
Of course poverty can be due to not being able to work, like me, of course people say to me come on rob you can work you have an education, yep and sadly employers take on look at my wheelchair means my brain has died.
Employers have a system of employing people and they do not like to many cripples around, in my area a lad in a wheelchair working IN Asda was told he was no longer wanted because of the recession.
I see my local NHS has decided to get rid of all it's cripples as well, so it's hard to find work.
I'm Paraplegic with loss of bowel and bladder dysfunction
Mark Macho
So the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Westminster are both
getting millions of taxpayer's money from the EU. Extra
millions for billionaires.
The obese lifestyles and greed of Britain's establishment rich:
It is not deliciously insouciant as the press and general
publishing papermill would have us believe but stupefying in
its sheer scale.And the newscasters speculate as to what could
possibly motivate riot! So much for the tutorial papermill
that churns them out, and for centuries! The stupidity is blinding
and the GREED.
Reality
Today we read " Fiona McMillan president of the Association of Colleges ...says that it is particularly the poorest students....who are not enrolling (because of the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance)".
We read "400 libraries are to close". We read that the Duke of Westminster, who is worth £7 billion, claimed £5.8 million from the public purse via the CAP and his buddy Charles Windsor known to some as Prince Charles claimed £1.5 million from the public purse
via the CAP (on top of course of their other public purse support)
A suggestion: if the greedy maws of the super rich were stopped from taking from the the public purse maybe we would not have to close our libraries. And we could ensure the poorest of the poor go to college again. Is this too much to expect from a supposedly civilized society or are the super-rich just going to be allowed to get away with their endlessly inordinate greed. And they wonder why we have riots!
David Vinter
So we have a minimum wage, why not a maximum? Obviously arragements would need to be made for folk like authors, so it would need to be averaged a bit!
Reality
Last people who tried that David were Pol Pot and other nutty
communist states. It is not those on wages we should overly worry about. It is the unwaged.
Elizabeth Windsor has just demanded £34 million a year from the public purse. Why give it to her? She is already obscenely rich (£5 billion isn't it?). Ditto her son Charles Windsor and the rest of their overdressed nothing to do family. Would we really be worse off without them?
Other countries do OK. Germany from whence the Windsors (Saxe-Gothburgs) hail would never want them back. Why do we have to put up with them in the 21st century? And don't bleat tourism. France and Italy and the States have massively larger tourist industries without the need for an obscenely expensive medieval monarchy that has no relevance in this day and age.
Alongside monarchy lets get rid of the cost to the public purse of the
Church. Very few believe in their delusional nonsense anymore. Why
do we have to pay for their absurdist ideas? (As Voltaire said "Doubt is uncomfortable but certainty is absurd") Indeed if we analyse
very carefully who takes unfair income from our society we could quite easily create a fairer society without the need of a "maximum wage" (eg stop the aristocracy and monarchy claiming farm subsidies
when guys like Grosvenor has £7 billion in the bank). It would be interesting to know if Elizabeth Windsor with that reputed £5 billion
claims CAP subsidies from the public purse on top of the £34 million a year we have to pay her.
Like the 18th century the obscene greed is at the top not in the
waged/salaried middle.
BowersMarcie35
Make your own life more easy take the home loans and everything you want.
David Vinter
Poverty today is a difficult measure. After all , it very much depends on where you live,maybe you own your house, have you got a garden, can you grow veg, or even keep a dozen chickens, does the family smoke, gamble, drink to excess, keep expensive pets,are you good at DIY, how good are your schools, [ we still have 20 grammar schools in Lincs],!
How is your family life, what age are you, do you need expensive clothes for work, must you run a car for going to work, where is it insured, I have a wealthy friend, but we both enjoy a monthly fish and chips. The list is endless, are you a saver, or a spender? What attitudes did your parents hand on to you? QED.