Complexity, Poverty and Social Exclusion
Dr David Gordon
Professor of Social Justice
School for Policy Studies
University of Bristol
Complexity & the Real World Workshop
Merchant Venturers Building, Rm 1.11
University of Bristol
22nd June 2010
Web Site: http://www.bris.ac.uk/poverty/
Poverty and Social Exclusion in the
United Kingdom: The 2011 Survey
The largest ever research project on Poverty and Social
Exclusion in the United Kingdom started on 1st April 2010.
The ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) has
funded this 42 month, £4.3 million pound investigation
designed to advance the ‘state of the art’ of poverty and
social exclusion measurement.
The research team is one of the most experienced in
poverty measurement methodology ever assembled in the
UK. It is a major collaboration between researchers at
Heriot-Watt University, the National Centre for Social
Research, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency,
Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of
Bristol, University of Glasgow and the University of York.
Background
Every decade since the late 1960s, UK social scientists have
attempted to carry out an independent poverty survey to test out
new ideas and incorporate current state of the art methods into
UK poverty research.
•1968-69 Poverty in the UK survey (Peter Townsend and
colleagues),
•1983 Poor Britain survey (Joanna Mack, Stewart Lansley)
•1990 Breadline Britain survey (Joanna Mack, Stewart Lansley)
•1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey (Jonathan Bradshaw
and colleagues) and its 2002 counterpart in Northern Ireland
(Paddy Hillyard and colleagues)
•2011 Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK - www.poverty.ac.uk
Objectives
1. To improve the measurement of poverty,
deprivation, social exclusion and standard
of living.
2. To measure the change in the nature and
extent of poverty and social exclusion over
the past ten years.
3. To produce policy-relevant results about the
causes and outcomes of poverty and social
exclusion.
The Terrible Costs of Poverty in
Developing Countries
Age at death by age group, 1990-1995
Source: The State of the World Population 1998
Make Poverty History: Click Video
Death Toll of 20th Century Atrocities
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm
Death toll of young children
from poverty, 1990 to 1995
Only the good die young? – what kills children
Cause of death for children under five
Bars show
estimated
confidence
interval
The Costs of Poverty in the UK
Economic Cost of Child Poverty in the UK
Child poverty costs the UK at least £25 billion a year,
(equivalent to 2% of GDP) including £17 billion that could
accrue to the Exchequer if child poverty were eradicated.
Public spending to deal with the fallout of child poverty is
about £12 billion a year, about 60 per cent of which goes
on personal social services, school education and police
and criminal justice.
- The annual cost of below-average employment rates and
earnings levels among adults who grew up in poverty is
about £13 billion, of which £5 billion represents extra
benefit payments and lower tax revenues; the remaining £8
billion is lost earnings to individuals, affecting gross
domestic product (GDP).
Child Poverty in the UK
The UK Government is committed to tackling the problem of child
poverty. In March 1999, the Prime Minister Tony Blair set out a
commitment to end child poverty forever:
“And I will set out our historic aim that ours is the first generation to end
child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a 20-year mission
but I believe it can be done.
The Child Poverty Act 2010 has placed this policy commitment into UK
law
Child Poverty Act 2010
Places in legislation the commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020,
this means that UK Secretary of State will have a duty to meet the
following child poverty targets:
•Relative poverty: Less than 10% of children living in relative
low income poverty by 2020.
•Material Deprivation: Less than 5% of children living in
combined material deprivation and low income.
•Absolute low income: Reduce the proportion of children who
live in absolute low income to less than 5%.
•Persistent Poverty: percentage of children living in relative
poverty for three out of four years (target level to be set by
the end of 2014 as data are currently unavailable)
Requires the UK Secretary of State to publish a UK child poverty strategy,
which must be revised every three years.
Definition and Measurement
Scientific Definitions of Poverty
Poverty can be defined as;
Command over insufficient resources over time
The result of poverty is deprivation
Peter Townsend’s concept of dynamic poverty
“poverty is a dynamic, not a static concept…Our
general theory, then, should be that individuals and
families whose resources over time fall seriously short
of the resources commanded by the average
individual or family in the community in which they live
. . . are in poverty.”
Townsend (1962, p 219)
Uni-dimensional Poverty Measurement Low Income in Britain 1961-2003
Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) index
1 q z- yi 
)
P =  (
n i =1 z
where:
Pα is the level of poverty
n is the population size
Q is the number of poor
z is the poverty line
yi is the per capita household income
and α has a normative value that can be set at different levels according
to the importance one attaches to the lowest living standards.
Modal Deprivation by Logarithm of Income as a Percentage
of Supplementary Benefit Scale Rates (Townsend, 1979)
Definition of poverty
Not Poor
Standard of Living
Poor
High
Poverty Threshold
Set Too High
Optimal Position of
the Poverty Threshold
Poverty Threshold
Set Too Low
Low
Low Income
Income
High
Income
Dynamics of poverty
Income and
Standard of
Living
Income
Standard of Living
High
Not Poor
Not Poor
Sinking
into
poverty
Poverty Threshold
Climbing
out of
poverty
Poor
Low
0
1
2
3
Time
4
5
Lotka-Volterra (Predator-Prey) Model
If we let R(t) and L(t) represent the number of rabbits and Canadian
Lynx, respectively, that are alive at time t, then the Lotka-Volterra
model is:
dR/dt = a*R - b*R*L
dL/dt = e*b*R*L - c*L
where the parameters are defined by:
a is the natural growth rate of Rabbits in the absence of predation,
c is the natural death rate of Lynx in the absence of food (Rabbits),
b is the death rate per encounter of Rabbits due to predation,
e is the efficiency of turning predated Rabbits into Lynx.
This is a simple first order non-linear differential model – when
extended to multiple species it exhibits chaotic dynamic behaviour
Key ref: May, R. (1974) Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems, Princeton U. Press, NJ.
Poverty Groups
Reasons why people do not participate in socially necessary activities
(%)
Can t afford to
47
Not interested
44
Lack of time due to childcare responsibilities
18
Too old, ill, sick or disabled
14
Lack of time due to paid work
14
No one to go out with (social)
6
No vehicle poor public transport
5
Lack of time due to other caring responsibilities
4
Fear of burglary or vandalism
3
Fear of personal attack
3
Can t go out due to other caring responsibilities
2
Problems with physical access
1
Feel unwelcome (e.g. due to disability ethnicity, gender,
age, etc)
1
None of these
8
Source: PSE 1999, Multiple responses allowed
The Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix (B-SEM)