1. Poverty, Social
Exclusion and Welfare
Week 11 – January 2014

2. With your partner – write it down
• Define poverty
• What or who is responsible for the poor?
• Is there a difference between poverty and
deprivation?
– If so, what is that difference?
• What solutions to poverty and deprivation can
you suggest?

3. Today
• Defining poverty:
– absolute
– relative
• Measuring poverty:
– Deprivation indices
• Why are the poor poor?
– structural forces and exclusion
• Civil responsibilities:
– The Welfare State

4. Denis Goulet (1971:23)
• “ The prevalent emotion of underdevelopment
is a sense of personal and societal impotence
in the face of disease and death, of confusion
and ignorance as one gropes to understand
change, of servility towards men whose
decisions govern the course of events, of
hopelessness before hunger and natural
catastrophe. Chronic poverty is a cruel kind of
hell, and one cannot understand how cruel
that hell is by merely gazing upon poverty as an
object”

5. Two key terms
Absolute
Poverty
• Absence of subsistence level of
income - the basic conditions that
must be met in order to sustain a
physically healthy existence
• Advantage:
– Universal
– Allows comparisons across countries
• Many developing countries have
large proportions of the population
living in absolute poverty
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
(1943)

6. Peter Townsend 1979:31
• How to compare standards of living within a country:
– Rwanda – 5.3% of national revenue – poorest 1/5
– USA – 5.4% of national revenue – poorest 1/5 (World
Bank, 2007)
• “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
accepted and approved, in the societies to which
they belong. Their resources are so seriously below
those commanded by the average individual or
family that they are, in effect, excluded from
ordinary living patterns, customs and activities.”

7. • Argues like Townsend that poverty measurements
based on the Poverty Line (i.e. the price of the basic
goods needed in that society for survival) is inaccurate
• There are regional differences, an office worker has
different nutritional needs to a manual worker
• The idea of relative poverty looks to culturally defined
measurements:
– the invention of permanent poverty?
– difficulties of measuring -
Relative Poverty

8. Early attempts at
measuring poverty
BASKET OF GOODS
1 Milk (2-4 pints)
2 Bread (5-6 lbs)
3 Coffee/cocoa
4 Porridge (10 pints)
5 Margarine (2-4 oz)
6 Pease pudding (1-2 lbs)
7 Tea
8 Cheese (12 oz - 1 lb)
9 Bacon (6-8 oz)
10 Vegetable broth (4-5
pints)
Rowntree (1901)

9. Official measurements of poverty
• Many countries use an official poverty line
• The UK does not have an official poverty line, but
use a variety of data, for example welfare data.
• E.g. Abel-Smith & Townsend (1965) those in
poverty have income at/below ‘supplementary
benefit level’ (later income support -1998)
• 1980s European Community standard:
– on or below 60% of median income (relative poverty)
– ‘Households Below Average Income’
– http://data.jrf.org.uk/data/relative-absolute-time/

10. Poverty Mapping
Charles Booth 19thC
1900 Joseph Rowntree
and Seebohm Rowntree
1950s Boom
Time
1980s Income gap widens
1910 Pensions
introduced
1942 Beveridge
Report – 1945
Atlee Election –
1946 NHS
1965 Townsend &
Abel-Smith The Poor
and The Poorest
1979
Townsend’s
deprivation
Index

12. 1979 Townsend’s Deprivation Index
12 items relevant across sample
• Subjective experience – in depth questionnaires
• 22% of population are in poverty and means-
tested benefits 50% less than needed for full
social participation
• Criticisms: arbitrary items (Piachaud 1987);
separation of socio-cultural decisions from
poverty and deprivation
• Deprivation factors highly influential
– Contemporary debates on citizenship and
participation

13. Who are the poor?
More
likely to
be poor
The North
of Britain
Women
Children
Ethnic
Minorities
Pensioners

14. Figure 10.4 Poverty rate1 and relative income2 of people aged 65 and over: EU
comparison, 1998
1 Percentage with income below 60 per cent of the median equivalised income of the national population
2 Median equivalised income of those aged 65 and over as a percentage of the population aged 0 to 64
Source: Social Trends (2004)

15. Why are the poor poor?
Two approaches
Individual Responsibility
Renewal in individualistic
values coinciding with
ambitions of 1980s
• (interview 31st October
1987 with Douglas Keay)
There is no
such thing as
society

16. Individual Responsibility
• Charles Murray (1984) ‘Culture of Poverty’ Thesis
– underclass
– illegitimate children and fall in stigmatization
– lack of role models
– unemployment and economic inactivity
– rise in crime and fall in punishments
– culture of the underclass and laziness
• ‘Dependency culture’.
– Created by the Welfare State
– Poor people rely on the government for ‘handouts’.
– Undermines personal ambition and capacity for self-help.
– Don’t look to the future/ strive for better life
However: widows, orphans or disabled people are exempt.
• On which political scale would this thesis sit- to the left, or to the right?

17. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3091717/The-Sun-declares-
war-on-Britains-benefits-culture.html

18. Figure 10.5 Assessing the causes of poverty
Survey question: ‘Why are there people in this country who live in need?’
Percentages reflect respondents’ identification of either ‘personal laziness’ or
‘societal injustice’ as the primary cause of poverty. Percentages for each country
do not add up to 100 because less frequently identified causes of poverty were
omitted from this figure
Source: Adapted from World Values Survey. R Inglehart & W Baker (2000) ‘Modernization, cultural change and the persistance of traditional values’, American Sociological Review,
65(1), pp 19–51

19. Structural Forces
Hutton (1995)
UK 1980s economic restructuring creates more divisions
• Decline of manufacturing industries, rise of low wage service sector, higher
unemployment, less attractive marriageable men  marriage less attractive to
poor women  number of children born outside of marriage increase  more
children born into poverty
• 30%= disadvantaged (out of work but looking, in irregular or short term jobs)
• 30% = marginalised insecure (have jobs but economic restructuring meant
weakening of unions, more fixed term contracts, meaning low income levels and
relative insecurity) this group often includes women in PT work.
• 40% = privileged (full time employment, not rich, but more secure, higher
income)
• Much harder to hold marriages together, parenting gets more stressful 
perception ‘nothing can be done’
• Policy measures required which distributed income and resources more equally
throughout society

20. Social Exclusion
• “the process through which individuals or
people are wholly or partially excluded from
full participation in the society in which they
live” (European Foundation 1995:4)
• How do people become cut off from wider
society through situations beyond their
control or through self-exclusion ?

21. Types of Social Exclusion
Service
Exclusion
Exclusion
from Social
Relationships
Labour
Market
Exclusion

23. Social Exclusion at
the top?

24. Empowerment & Choice = Freedom!
• Under-development is not necessarily poor material
living standards (e.g. low income) but conceptualised
as a lack of choice or capabilities.
• Poverty is a failure to take full part in human society;
– gender discrimination might limit choice.
• empowerment – giving people more power, stopping
institutions from disempowing people -and
participation necessary in society.

25. The Citizen and the Welfare State
• Most industrialized and developed countries have
some form of welfare state
• Why is this?
• Thomas Jefferson (1809) government should be
judged by how well it meets its legitimate objectives.
“The care of human life and happiness and not their
destruction is the only legitimate object of good
government."
• Marx – welfare to support the machine of capitalism,
maintain the proletariat as workers
• Functionalists – Comte, Durkheim, Merton etc- help to
integrate in orderly manner

26. Marshall (1973)
 The evolution of citizenship in Britain
 Civil rights 18th C
 Political rights 19th C
 Social rights 20th C
Turner (1990):
evolutionary approach not applicable to other nations
No explanation given of how or why progression achieved
Crisis of ‘welfarism’ in 1970s and attempts to reduce welfare (the
coalition government!) counter the theory
Popularity continues: environmental or ecological citizenship

27. The Welfare State
• Esping-Andersen (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
• Decommodification – the degree to which welfare systems are
free from the market
• Three types:
1. Social Democratic:
1. High democracy level
2. Universal benefits
3. Scandinavian states (Sweden etc)
2. Conservative-Corporatist:
1. Not universal
2. Benefits depends on position in society
3. Not aimed at eliminating equalities. Keeping strong family
3. Liberal:
1. Welfare is commoditised (ie sold through the market)
2. USA
3. Means- tested benefits only available to very needy --- stigmatised

28. Britain ...
• Does not quite fit into any category!
• Used to be Social-Democratic, then influence
of 1970s onwards welfare reforms:
– Welfare to Work
– Care in the Community
• have moved Britain towards a Liberal welfare
state...

29. Britain and the Welfare State
Poor
Laws
1601
Poor Law
Amendment
Act 1834
Pre-WW1
Liberal
Government
Beveridge
Report 1942
Education Act 1944
National Health Act 1946
National Insurance Act 1946
National Assistance Act 1948
1970s
breakdown
1980s
attempts to
reduce
welfare
New Labour –
Welfare to
Work
The Coalition
Government...

30. Q&A: the Turner Report
Guardian 2006
What are the problems with the system?
• Rising life expectancy
• by 2050 the average 65-year-old male can expect to live until he is 83
• the average 65-year-old female should live until she is 90.
• Women who take career breaks to look after children miss out on the national
insurance contributions
– As a result, 30% are entitled to a full state pension when they retire.
• Voluntary pension provision has been in decline.
• The cost to employers of offering final salary pension schemes has increased
• Nerves about investing money in pension schemes; poor stock market
performance and mis-selling scandals.

31. What did the commission suggest?
...the main recommendations contained in its 460-page report were:
• ·The introduction of a more generous, flat-rate universal pension paid to those who
qualify on the grounds of residency in the UK, not on the grounds of national
insurance contributions
• · The pension would rise in line with earnings, not prices
• · An increase in state spending on pensions, from 6.2% of GDP to nearer 8%
• · An increase in the state retirement age from 65 to 68. This would be introduced
gradually over three decades, starting in 2020 when the pensionable age for
women is aligned with that of men
• · The introduction of a national pensions saving scheme (NPSS), which would be
offered through employers, and would automatically enrol workers unless they
requested to opt out[...]

32. Further critical thinking
• Do you think a comprehensive welfare state
system leads to a dependency culture?
• Which countries would you expect to have the
highest rates of welfare dependency?
• Is everyone able to work?
• How can we help the long-term unemployed?

33. George Orwell –Down and Out in Paris
and London
[A] plongeur is one of the slaves of the modern world. Not
that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better
off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than
if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without
art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only
holiday is the sack... trapped by a routine which makes
thought impossible. If plongeurs thought at all, they would
long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better
treatment. But they do not think, because they have no
leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.

34. Literature and Film
• The Grapes of Wrath
(John Steinbeck 1939)
• Angela’s Ashes (Frank
McCourt 1996)
• Down and Out in Paris
and London (George
Orwell 1933)
• Keep the Aspidistra
Flying (George Orwell
1936)

35. Independent study
• Cornell notes
• Homework forums