Poverty and Social Exclusion
What is poverty?

Absolute poverty
◦ Idea of subsistence, the basic conditions that must be
met in order to sustain a physically healthy existence
◦ Universally applicable concept

Relative poverty
◦ Needs differ between time and place, ‘culturally
defined’
◦ As societies grow, standards for poverty are
continually revised upwards
◦ ‘The invention of permanent poverty’
Measuring Poverty
Use of deprivation index, not income statistics
 Townsend’s twelve items – 22.9% of population
in poverty
 Mack and Lansley’s Breadline Britain used 22item index based on respondents’ own
definitions
 Gordon’s Poverty and Social Exclusion was partial
replication of BB and showed that number of
households without key items had grown

Who is poor?
Regional dimension – North-South divide
 Child poverty – more than doubled in
twenty years from 1979 from 14 to 34%
 Female poverty – women account for
58% of all adults in poverty
 Ethnic minorities (Pakistani/Bangladeshi)
due to high unemployment, low
employment rates, labour market
segregation

Why are the poor poor?
Theories that see poor individuals as
responsible for their own poverty
Theories that view poverty as (re)produced by
structural forces in society
Murray’s work on the dependency culture –
welfare state undermines self-help and personal
ambition
WJ Wilson – economic restructuring
hypothesis,
jobs flee to the suburbs, fall in numbers of
marriageable men, vicious cycle of disadvantage
Social Exclusion

Ways in which individuals become cut off
from full involvement in wider society:
◦ Either by decisions lying outside their control
◦ Or by self-exclusion: ‘drop outs’, ‘non-voters’

Types of Social Exclusion:
◦ Labour market exclusion
◦ Service exclusion
◦ Exclusion from social relations
Examples of Social Exclusion

Housing and neighbourhoods
◦ Large stratified housing market
◦ Dependent upon existing and projected resources
◦ Both at household and community level

Rural areas
◦ Sparsely populated areas have less access to goods,
services and facilities
◦ Transport is a key need leading to car dependence

Homelessness
◦ No address makes participation in society difficult
◦ Mental health patients, young people, others suffering
from single or multiple personal disasters