POVERTY - KEY PEOPLE

Question 1

Charles Booth

Answer 1

ABSOLUTE POVERTY
Conducted interviews and looked at statistics about poverty in London’s East End in 1902.
There was a ‘poverty line’ of 20 shillings a week- a person earning less than that could be considered in poverty
Poverty was ‘the inability to help oneself’
35% of those studied were experiencing this definition of poverty

Question 2

Townsend

Answer 2

RELATIVE POVERTY
Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diets, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged and approved, in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commande by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living patterns, customs or activities.

Question 3

Mack and Lansley

Answer 3

SUBJECTIVE POVERTY
Conducted research where they tried to reach a ‘consensual’ definition of poverty (e.g. based on what others felt were essential).
They asked groups of people what items were essential and which were not. A person lacking three of these items was considered to be experiencing poverty. In 1983, Mack and Lansley’s sample returned 22 items that were ‘essential’, but by 1985 there were 32.

Question 4

David Marsland

Answer 4

• The welfare state is so generous that the poor give up on work and become dependent on the government
• Welfare takes money away from investment in the economy.
• Universal welfare should be withdrawn and replaced with means testing to ensure that only those who really need them receive government assistance

Question 5

Charles Murray

Answer 5

• Created the term ‘underclass’.
• He applied this to both US and UK cities. In the UK, these were London and the cities of the East Midlands: Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Peterborough.
• An ‘underclass’ exists in the UK: a group of poor people who don’t want to work, instead living off welfare
• Illegitimacy and substance abuse are common among the underclass, basically because they have little else to do.
• As a result of weak families, society is beginning to crumble.

Question 6

Herbert Gans

Answer 6

Argued that poverty is functional for society, even if it is not functional for individuals.
- Poverty ensures that socially necessary, but unpleasant, jobs are completed so that society can continue to function
- Poverty creates job opportunities through dealing with the effects of poverty
- The threat of poverty is an incentive to push ourselves to work harder

Question 7

Oscar Lewis

Answer 7

Lewis argues that:
- Poverty is a consequence of poor socialisation
- Those who are poorly socialised are unlikely to be able to remove themselves from poverty
- Another difference that Lewis took to Herbert Gans is that he looked at the global poor, conducting interviews and questionnaires in Puerto Rico and Mexico.
- By the age of 6, children have a sense of fatalism- the idea that nothing they do can change their situation
- The poor self-segregate, mixing only with other poor people and failing to access institutions that would help themselves like education and training
- The poor lack: Ambition, Motivation, Energy, Trustworthiness, All of which are crucial to escape poverty.

Question 8

Coates and Silburn

Answer 8

Studied a working class neighbourhood in Nottingham and found that there was a cycle of deprivation where people are unable to escape.