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 from surveys of social actors’ own perceptions and experience of deprivation.
It is tempting to diminish the idea of any poverty in the UK. Although the government does not define any official poverty line, until recently it published statistics of ‘low income families’. These statistics indicated the trends in the numbers of families who are receiving supplementary benefit or housing benefit; and the numbers of families who, although not receiving such benefits, have incomes below supplementary benefit or housing benefit. They also included the number of families who, although not receiving such benefits, have incomes below supplementary benefit level, or below 110, 120 or 140 per cent of that level. Whichever of these levels is chosen, the official data shows that the numbers of ‘low income families’ increased by one third or more between 1979-1983; as a proportion of the overall population of persons living on incomes below the supplementary level (and thus below the level at which the government in the UK would have considered their basic needs to have been met) increased from 4% of the population in 1979 to 5.2% in 1983. This then dropped back to 4.5% in 1985 while the proportion living below 140% of supplementary benefit level increased from 22.0 to 30.5% of the population. Nevertheless, the number of persons and families thus defined by some commentators as living in poverty clearly depends on the changing levels of social assistance benefit. Fierce controversy has raged during recent years over the extent to which the increasing numbers of ‘low income families’ during the 1980s can be explained in terms of increases in the real value of social assistance benefits (CPAG, 1998, p.8).
There was little evidence to show that these high rates of poverty had been declining during the 1980’s and poverty in the UK is much less of a novelty than in contrast to countries such as Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands as social insurance benefits in the UK have during the post-war period been set at a relatively low level. In consequence, a significant proportion of the population has been dependent on social assistance, the nearest thing that exists to an ‘official’ definition of poverty. This has helped to ensure that poverty has remained an issue in public debate for most of this period.
However it should be noted that after the completion of the Single Market, with increased employment and free trade the UK managed to keep its poverty rates below the average of the 12 countries. Yet this is not to say that poverty does not exist.
Far from diminishing, a position of polarisation in the UK has continued to develop throughout the 80’s and 90’s. According to Townsend, between 1979-1990 there was a loss of purchasing power, which particularly affected the poorest 20% of the population. As the poor become poorer, according to Townsend, the rich are becoming richer at a rapid rate.
In many different ways, the quality of the forms of citizenship available to the least prosperous sections of society was determined by their capacity to participate in the relevant structures of activity.
Charles Murray spoke of the underclass and in doing this he focused on 3 symptoms: crime; illegitimacy, and economic activity among working-aged men. He comments (in Underclass: the crisis deepens) that things in the UK have been getting worse. Whether or not they are characterised as the emergence, or establishment, of a new underclass there is now no doubt that there are growing division within British society. Inequality is greater than two decades ago, and this has accentuated divisions of gender, race and age, as well as class.
Murray’s arguments in my opinion are fundamentally flawed in a numerous respects. His arguments are predicated on moral rather than scientific reasoning and his politics appear to be obscured in simplistic sets of claims. Moreover, he lacks understanding and appreciation of the characteristics of British society, its social class structure and social and policy processes. I feel he tries to present arguments based on the US as if automatically applied to Britain.
But at the same time it still seems impossible to shake off Murray’s analysis of Britain’s underclass because it has exposed the decay at the core of our society that most of us would prefer to ignore.
Commentators such as Laurence Peter King and Haan (1998) believe that aspects of the situation are getting worse. Changes in the pattern of poverty over the past two decades that has given rise to concern of a ‘new poverty’ most prevalent among ethnic minorities, migrants, the young and the lower working class. Many feel that the change in policies going to the ‘genuinely needy’ widening the gap between benefit levels and wages rather than increasing the level of provision. Benefit regimes for single parents and the young have become harsher-job subsidies have been removed and the number of people at the poverty line has increased.
According to Hills there are key reasons as to why the rich are getting rich and the gap between the rich and poor is increasing. He claims that increased wage differentials, Increased pensioners, Decoupling of benefits and pensions from earnings and changes in taxation are all factors.
In the UK, partly as a consequence of government policy on benefits and tax the results are more extreme than in other countries-the increased average earnings combined with greater inequality have increased the proportion of households living below the poverty line-19% today (Hills 1998a).
Like Murray I believe that the progressive collapse of the intact family is bringing about a set of social changes, which is taking us into un-chartered waters. I recognise that there are now whole communities, framed by structural unemployment, in which fatherlessness has become the norm. These communities lead to the issues of troubled children leading to fragmentation and chaos.
However unlike Murray I do not believe the collapse of families is confined to only the lower classes. The accelerating rates of divorce, cohabitation and out-of –wedlock births are being driven along by the revolution in women’s expectations and economic circumstances.
It is clear that both economically and in terms of living standards the UK on the whole has become more prosperous in recent years. Because national income in rich countries is many times larger than in the poor countries members of the former are tempted to dismiss the severity of conditions experienced by the poorest in their own countries in the belief that they have food enough and access enough to a variety of modern facilities. At the same time they respond sympathetically to reports and pictures of Sub-Saharan Africa etc. People who react in this way ignore common international causes of impoverished conditions in the two places.
I have proved that although the UK has become more prosperous, Poverty still effectively exists. The key difference is the shift from Absolute Poverty to Relative Poverty and the fact that the gap in income inequality between the rich and the poor is ever growing. Although the UK was used as a basis for my paper, it is important to realise that absolute poverty still exists on the world scale. In 3rd world countries many millions are still living at standards, which can only be described as those of utter destitution. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has continued to grow for 20 years. (United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)). The rate of absolute poverty - people living on one dollar a day or less - in Sub-Saharan Africa is nearing 50 percent. "While between 1981 and 2001 the number of people living in absolute poverty fell worldwide from 40 percent to 21 percent of the total population, in Sub-Saharan Africa it increased from 42 percent to 47 percent," (UNIDO Director-General Carlos Magarinos).
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