'As Society Has Become More Prosperous, Poverty Has Effectively Disappeared' Discuss

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Essay For Nisrine Mansour-SA101

200301327

‘As society has become more prosperous, Poverty has effectively disappeared’ Discuss

        In recent years growth of the UK economy has been dramatic as even minute increases in a country's growth rate can result in remarkable changes in living standards over just one generation. The average family can now expect, cars, technologically advanced entertainment, further education for its children and a longer life than ever. Has the less fortunate been left behind as the rest of society has prospered. Recent economic research has found both positive and negative relationships between growth and inequality not just in the UK but also throughout the world.

There is no questioning that the UK as a whole has become more prosperous. The British economy has experienced 9 years of economic growth since the last recession ended in 1992. Since 1996 the level of real national output has grown in excess of 2% per year leading to a rise in total GDP and average living standards (Begg 2003). Growth in the 4th quarter of 2004 increased by 0.7% and the level of GDP was 2.9% higher than the same quarter for 2003. However the basis of my thesis is that rapidly increasing access to international markets, combined with increasing control of domestic labour markets has led to the depression of the incomes of the poor at the same time as the enlargement of the incomes of the rich. As a result, the UK has become more prosperous but poverty has not been entirely eradicated. Absolute poverty may have disappeared but the inequality gap between the rich and poor has greatly increased seeing a rise in relative poverty.

The definition of poverty is an extremely controversial issue. How it is defined is critical to political, policy and academic debates about the concept. I have found in most debates there is reference to two different types of poverty, Absolute and Relative. Absolute poverty is the minimum level necessary for subsistence and is often associated with an individualist, residual model of welfare. Relative poverty is the principle that all individuals at some point in their lives require welfare, the responsibility for which is a collective one (Spicker 1993).

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The absolutist tradition refers back to Rowntree and Booth as its founders. They attempted to discover the minimum income, which an individual, a family or a household would require in order to obtain the physical necessities of life. Furthering this, Townsend has sought to promote a relative definition of poverty, which recognises that the needs which an individual or family must satisfy in order to live as a member of his society are socially rather that physically determined. What is distinctive about Townsend’s approach is that the criteria for defining poverty, instead of being chosen by social researchers, are derived ...

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