education and information. It depends not only on income but also on
access to services.”
(Tackling Social Exclusion- John Pierson)
A definition of Relative poverty would be:
“ the poor shall be taken to mean persons, families and groups of persons
whose resources (material, cultural and social) are so limited as to
exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life of the Member
State in which they live.”
(Tackling Social Exclusion- John Pierson)
Although social exclusion and poverty go hand in hand, they are not the same thing. For example, Continental Europe has seen a major rise in unemployment over the past two decades without this leading to mass poverty. The European welfare state has been remarkably successful in providing an effective safety net – unlike the UK, where the proportion of households with low income more than doubled in the years when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. However, European countries are right to be concerned that unemployment may lead to people being excluded from participation in society. The UK government is right to stress this at the European level.
It is inevitable that the root of social exclusion is poverty, and the deprivation that impoverishment causes. Certain individuals may see social exclusion as a more appropriate term than poverty, because it may hide the reality of poverty. It is seen as a more acceptable label. The life long effects of social exclusion can be seen at each stage of development. Those who suffer deprivation in the early years often under achieve. Long term unemployment during adulthood, may lead to poverty in old age, which in itself may lead to social exclusion at a time when we need to be included the most.
People or groups with certain characteristics experience social exclusion more frequently than others do. For example, other factors that could influence and encourage social exclusion are:
- poor skills
- low income
- poor housing
- high crime environments
- bad health
- family breakdowns
- equality of opportunities
- government policies, and so forth.
All of these factors can be categorised into groups of family, individual, society and the environment.
Tony Blair once stated,
“ Those who do not have the means, material and otherwise, to participate in
social, economic, political and cultural life.”
(‘From Poverty to Social Justice’ – Goodlad.R.)
Goodlad.R. refers to social exclusion being generally accepted as the breakdown or failure of the building blocks of society, the democratic and legal system, the labour market, the welfare system and the community system. To combat social exclusion and bring about social inclusion, we need to restore these systems.
It states in “Understanding social exclusion” by John Hills, Julian Le Grand and David Piachaud, that social exclusion is unequivocally more than poverty. Although, poverty is a key forerunner and component of social exclusion. Equally, social exclusion goes beyond other economic variables, such as employment status or occupational class.
The term “social exclusion” became popular in the late 1980’s and was used to describe the results of the radical economic, industrial and social changes that were taking place in France and elsewhere around Europe. These included long-term or repeated unemployment, family instability, social isolation and the decline of neighbourhood and social networks. Social exclusion was seen to be the outcome of two things. The first being separation from employment and the second being separation from social relations, particularly the family.
The European Union adopted the term but definitely widened the definition, noting that social exclusion occurs when people cannot fully participate or contribute to society because of:
“ the denial of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.”
(Poverty: the Facts, Child Poverty Action Group, 1996)
Definitions also indicate that it results from:
“ a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low
incomes, poor housing, bad health and family breakdown.”
( Social Exclusion Unit Leaflet, July 2000)
The relationship between social exclusion and poverty is close, but far from straightforward. Social exclusion covers both the causes and effects of poverty, discrimination and disadvantage. Definitions of social exclusion often resemble those of relative poverty, and the term is sometimes used interchangeably with poverty, but the concepts are not identical. A key difference between them is that ideas about exclusion are primarily concerned with processes. For example, the way things actually happen. Whereas poverty has tended to be understood as a condition or set of circumstances. For example, the way things actually are.
The term social exclusion is useful when examining the complex relationship between the causes and effects of poverty. For example, the ways in which long-term unemployment can result in a lack of confidence in individuals, making it difficult for them to seek new jobs. Or the ways in which race discrimination leads to poverty.
“ Social exclusion draws attention to the multi-dimensional aspects of
deprivation and helps us to understand the process which leads to poverty.
It may therefore be helpful in seeking new strategies for tackling poverty….
It is also helpful in that it focuses attention on who is deprived and why.”
(Women’s participation projects, a rights approach to social exclusion –2000)
However, the drawback of using such a wide-ranging term such as social exclusion is that its relationship, which is ultimately about lack of money, may be lost. Indeed, some people would argue that poverty may be part of social exclusion, but the latter is a much broader concept which does not necessarily always involve ‘an element of poverty’.
Many of the traditional means that have been used to measure poverty and deprivation are also used as indicators of exclusion. For example, the Scottish Executive mentions, as indicators of social exclusion, unemployment, income, educational attainment, various indices of health, incidence of drug addiction and crime rates. It is worth noting that while such information on the progress of policies, they do not always provide much information on the processes that cause them.
Poverty assimilating onto social exclusion can also be described as:
“…poverty is only one attribute of those at the bottom of the heap: they are
they are more properly defined as excluded because they live outside the
world of work, of education and of sociability itself. Their contacts narrow
to a point where they receive little or no information through the informal
networks that assist most people into work: they are stranded in a kind of
desert in which they vulnerable to vultures that prey on them, or encourage
them to prey on others, their isolation only periodically visited by welfare
and enforcement agencies. These come in a variety of guises, all confusing
or threatening….”
(Lloyd, 1997)
Furthermore, 'social exclusion' implies that processes are at work with out the control of the individual. In a modern economy, the single greatest symptom of social exclusion is likely to be low income, arising from unemployment or precarious or low-paid employment. Paid work can give not only an income but a degree of independence, a sense of self-worth and a socially-valued identity. Poverty, furthermore, contributes to poor health, both physical and psychological, reduced life expectancy and general poor quality of life.
Increased material poverty, leading to social exclusion, is only part of the extent of poverty. Social exclusion is also affected by massive inequalities in cultural recognition and social diversity, as well as huge inequalities relating to and reinforced by unequal access to information and education. People who are currently referred to as ‘socially excluded’ are not only financially poor, but they are also from social groups whose ethnicity, culture and identity carry the best amount of recognition, influence and power in society. They are likely to be the least well educated and the most disenfranchised when it comes to active participation in civil and democratic society.
My conclusion to this essay would be that it is very easy, and has been very easy to confuse social exclusion and poverty to mean the same things. They have often been categorised as the same things, but the distinction is unquestionably there. The root of poverty comes from social exclusion and vice versa. They reflect upon one another, hence why they have mixed together as the same thing. People used to refer as social exclusion as a more polite way to refer to poverty. People may see poverty as something that will only occur in third world countries. However, people are now acting more realistically by understanding that it is a worldwide issue, and especially within Britain and the rest of Europe, needs to be controlled. Tony Blair, once he was elected in 1997, promised that to get rid of social exclusion and poverty was high on his agenda, and although there have been many reports to say that this is just so, I have also discovered that poverty is looked upon in a different way. It used to be the case that to be in poverty was to have no basic foundations for living: namely shelter, warmth, money, etc. However, a variety of statistics now show that many people today believe that basic foundations to live on a day-to-day basis is much more in depth. To end my conclusion, I leave with you a survey conducted by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), providing unparalleled detail about the material and social deprivation and exclusion among the British population at the close of the twentieth century.
I hope that I have discussed my argument that social exclusion and poverty is not the same thing.
