social class inequalities in poverty

Question 1

what is social class inequality in poverty?

Answer 1

• studying poverty focuses our attention on those at the lower end if the income scale, on people who often own little or no wealth
• however, there is no agreement as to what we mean by poverty
• this means that there is also considerable controversy over the extent of poverty
• child poverty action group argues that there are about 3.5 million children in poverty in the UK however some conservative politicians have denied that poverty still exists in the UK at all

Question 2

what is absolute poverty?

Answer 2

• absolute poverty is a lack of basic essentials needed to survive physically these include adequate food, clothing, housing and fuel
• working out what essentials a person needs and how much they cost is a complex task and not all researchers would agree where this kind off poverty line should be drawn

Question 3

what did Bradshaw et al (2008) say about absolute poverty?

Answer 3

• Bradshaw has attempted to develop a budget standard of poverty
• this tries to define a minimum acceptable income by calculating what is needed to afford an acceptable living standard based on a costed list of items deemed as essential

Question 4

what do critics say about absolute poverty?

Answer 4

• critics argue that absolute definitions only allow for a persons physical needs and take no account of what is needed to participate fully in society
• it could also be argued that in the UK today being able to take part in leisure activities such as holidays and outings being able to buy presents for friends and family and having access to a TV or mobile phone are seen as socially necessary by most people though none of these are necessary to physical survival

Question 5

what is relative poverty?

Answer 5

• most sociologists today use some form of relative definition of poverty
• relative poverty involves judging whether a persons income is so far below that expected by the majority of people in society that they are excluded from a normal lifestyle
• the problem here is agreeing what items should be included as being necessities without which a person should be regarded as being in poverty
• relative definitions of poverty also imply that what we define as poverty is not fixed, and that the poverty line in the UK will be much higher than say India because the majority of people have a much higher living standard in the UK

Question 6

what do critics say about relative poverty?

Answer 6

-critics argue that it is impossible to ever eradicate relative poverty as some people will also be worse off than others and therefore arguably in relative poverty

Question 7

what are households below average income?

Answer 7

• there are no official statistics of poverty in the UK
• however the government does publish statistics on households below average income drawing on data from official survey such as the family resources survey and the British household panel survey
• HBIA defines low incomes as being below 60% of the median

Question 8

why has households below average income been criticised?

Answer 8

• HBAI has been criticised for being an arbituary cut of point
• for example why not use 50% or 70% of median income?
• some critics would argue that many people just below the 60% cut off point are not so badly off that they should be defined as poor

Question 9

what are the households below income statistics?

Answer 9

• the HBIA statistics for 2012/3 show little change in levels of poverty in the UK since around 2003
• however it can be argued that poverty has become more severe since the start of the recession following the banking crisis in 2008
• figures from the Trussell Trust, a charity that provides food banks to help the poorest families, suggest that in 2014, 4.7 million people were in food poverty in other words, had insufficient income to affords a healthy diet compared to fewer than 26,000 in 2008/9

Question 10

what is the consensual measure of poverty by Mack et al (1985)?

Answer 10

• another method of measuring relative poverty was pioneered by Mack et al which involved asking a series of representative focus groups which of a list of items they regarded as necessities
• items that were rated as necessities by 50% or more of respondents were then included in a list
• the researchers then carried out a living standards survey of a sample of the general population, asking them about how many of these necessities they had to go without because they could not afford them
• households lacked three or more necessities were counted as poor and those that went without 5 items were defined as in severe poverty

Question 11

what is the PSE study of the impoverishment of the UK?

Answer 11

• PSE study on the impoverishment of the UK interestingly, respondents in each successive survey have tended to include an ever increasing number of items in the list of necessities, supporting the view behind the relative definition of poverty that we need to constantly revise what we mean by poverty in line with rising expectations in society

Question 12

what did the PSE study (2012) find?

Answer 12

• the PSE study carried out in 2012 suggests that there has been a major increase in poverty since Mack et al’s original study was published
• in 2012, 33% of households were defined as suffering from multiple deprivation because they lacked three necessities compared to 14% in 1983