The Nature and Extent of Poverty Flashcards
What is the poverty line?
People living on or bellow 60% of the median income.
How many people were living in absolute poverty in the UK in 2023?
11.7 million and its set to increase by 300,000 in 2024.
What did Booth find?
He studied the labour and life of people living in London in the 1800s. He believed in the deserving poor.
What did Rowntree find?
He studied poverty in York, the first was published in 1901, believing in the deserving poor. He defined what poverty was in order to properly understand the factors causing poverty, believing it to be structural reasons not moral like previously believed.
What’s absolute poverty?
Someone who lacks the bare minimum needed for survival.
How has the coronavirus effected poverty?
The most vulnerable in society are the ones which have been most effected such as single parent family’s, renters and EMGS.
How much is universal credit a week?
£265
What are the three problems in defining absolute poverty?
- Its hard to objectively identify basic needs. 2. It ignores the reality of peoples lives like when somebody gets sick. 3. It doesn’t consider the impact of cultural expectations.
What did Townsend come up with?
He argued that individuals can be considered in poverty when they are in relative deprivation which leads to social exclusion. He came up with the deprivation index to measure this- a list of goods and services that if people could not afford they were considered poor.
What are 3 strengths of the idea of relative deprivation?
- It recognizes that poverty is a social construct. 2. It recognizes that the definition of poverty changes over time. 3. It links poverty to wider issues of social exclusion.
What are 3 weakness of the idea of relative deprivation?
- Its not an indicator of poverty more social exclusion as relative poverty is experienced at every class level. 2. Its based on the values of experts not members of the public. 3. The measures of absolute poverty is much more scientific and easy to measure, as a result, solutions are easier to find.
How does Townsend describe social exclusion?
People feeling marginalised or excluded from participating in education, work and etc showing that multiple factors can lead to poverty not just income.
