Poverty: What Counts?
Background
The study of poverty has, for a long time, been an area of interest to government bodies, social scientists, and community scientists, which many at times have been a result of an economic crisis. Like other phenomena, poverty has varying understanding and perception, from different people, due to its diverse nature and background. Poverty has become an implacable and unrelenting enemy with a collection of the weapon of child death, starvation, disease, illiteracy, violence, and child trafficking (Routledge & Kegan Paul: London. 2001, p. 484). Poverty can well be as a result of groups with similar characteristics continuously undergoing deprivation with respect to fundamental necessities such as healthcare, food, shelter, clothing, education, and access to communication tools. Other people describe poverty as families or people whose earnings are under a certain threshold level regardless of their living standards.
It is estimated that nearly a quarter (24%) of the population in the UK lived in Poverty twenty years ago. By 2004, this had fallen to about one in five of the community. The UK has succeeded in reducing poverty over the last 20 years, significantly among the groups that had been at most risk – some families with children and pensioners. Among working-age households, there was little progress that was made in reducing poverty. It is in recent years that poverty rates have started to rise one more among both families with children and pensioners (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2014, p. 3).
Some of the issues that often leave people vulnerable to poverty, and solutions to it, often lie at the family level and an individual, with most of them being part of the forces that are far wider and relate to the inequalities within both the economy and society as a whole. Poverty and gender draw attention to the various and many ways that social structures, gender roles, and relationships affect poverty. There is always an issue of who is at the most significant risk. Mostly young women, at the household level, and women that are elderly and single typically have the highest poverty rates. Sometimes, poverty can be hidden within a household, if the given resources are not equally shared, and either of the partners is more financially dependent, creating poverty risks in the future if the partnership fails afterward (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2014, p. 6.. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
. The argument is, more attention should be paid to rights to income and people’s individual income, including the tax credits and the design of benefits. There is also a need for a more leveled and equal distribution of earning and care within couples.
Not only has the definition of poverty been a challenging process, but the way in which poverty should be measured also been contested and difficult. “We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected (MDG 2000).” This is a bold statement that was issued by the International community in September 2000, which pronounced the eradication of poverty by the year 2015. To coincide with this commitment from the International community, the World Bank had to focus its 2000/01 World Development Report on the exploration of the best of practices for reaching its goal, ensuring poverty alleviation is repositioned as the greatest single mission to guide the bank in its programs and policies (Khan, 2004, p. 298).
This report analyzes the poverty levels in the UK shown by both material deprivation and income. Arguably, income deprivation is still a more fundamental issue on whether, in the first place, it is the most appropriate measure of Poverty (Khan, 2004, p. 298). Income deprivation has since become widely accepted among community scientists and researchers that the definition of poverty could be in many ways, and that inadequate or lack of access to services that are basic such as education and health may be a greater underdevelopment and poverty cause than just income deprivation alone.
HBAI Dataset
The report published by the Department of Work and Pensions on Households Below Average Income (HBAI) will be the survey used for this paper. This report provides commentary and statistics on the living standards in the United Kingdom, which is determined by disposable income. These include the percentage and number of people that live in low-income households, and the changes that take place in their incomes over time (Assets, 2020, p. 2).
The Department for Work and Pensions, in their HBAI report, states that the report is the foremost source for data and information about inequality in the United Kingdom and household income, by presenting information on the peoples’ living standards in the United Kingdom. For this reason, I chose to use this survey since it puts focuses on both inequality and income. This given report edition of the HBAI was published on 28 March 2019 and refers to the financial year 2017/18.
The data that the HBAI report uses comes from the Family Resources Survey2017/18, which was published in 2019 by the Department for Work and Pensions. The design given to the family Resources Survey is to ensure it is a representative of the households that are private in the United Kingdom. The survey having been conducted by the government, makes it beneficial to making conclusions from its findings since the scale is large enough. The data in this report is from interviews conducted within 22,407 households in the United Kingdom, as per the provided data set (Assets, 2020, p. 5).
To make the research proportionate of the general public, the Family and Resources Survey used a stratified clustered probability design that sampled 1,407 postcode sectors out of the total 12,000, ensuring that the probability of selection is proportional to size (Assets, 2020, p. 10). The interviews were conducted face to face and took an average of an hour to two as per the Department of Work and Pensioners report.
Poverty Measures.
Like any other statistical indicators, measurements of poverty are just not a technical matter but also are a reflection of the concerns that are social and attached values to the subject in question. Who defines, and what it means to be poor is still a topic that social, community and researchers together with policymakers from a cross-section of the various disciplines have had a battle with over several years (Chambers, 2005, p. 176). Discussed below are some of the poverty measures, which mainly contribute to Poverty in the United Kingdom.
Material Deprivation – Whether child materially deprived (MDSCORECH is greater or equal to 25) and on a low income (<50% median BHC)
The first measure of the child in the United Kingdom which I have used in this paper on child poverty is material deprivation.
To have this determined, the respondents who took part in the survey were asked a variety of questions on whether they had access to certain services and goods. In regard to child poverty, the questions that were asked were specific to the living standards of the child (Kim, Eunju, 2015, p. 106). The questions included were for example if each high school child had a car for commute if the child attends to a private or a public school and if they are able to meet the tuition fees, and if each child in the given households would get a holiday treat away from home during summer. These questions are asked to respondents on whether their income meets the threshold to afford them or when they lack the customary needs.
The services and goods to the living standards of a child had weighted importance so that those that were deemed important carried more weight as opposed to those that were considered of low or no importance, in determining whether or not a child is materially deprived. The scores given were out of 100, and those children who were seen to have scored in excess of 25 were seen to be in poverty.
The limitation of using material deprivation as a measure of poverty is that selecting deprivation indicators that should be heavily weighted is arbitrary. For instance, while some people are of the belief that a high school student has to have a car so as not to be in poverty, others may not see it as a necessity (Kim, Eunju, 2015, p. 106).
Goodman and Myck highlight the benefit of a material deprivation measure over income, they state: ‘we can use material deprivation as a proxy for long-term financial status…’ and conclude ‘material deprivation seems to contain some additional information about a family’s financial well-being, over and above the information summarized in the level of current disposable income.’ (Goodman and Myck 2005, p. 76). This means that measuring deprivation will add to income measurement and can be more reliable in indicating long-term financial situations than a snapshot measure of income.
Income – Whether (net equalized) household income (Before Housing Costs) is below 60% median
The second measure of child poverty in the United Kingdom which I have used in this paper on child poverty is whether households’ net income falls below 60% of the income of households in the United Kingdom.
Income as a measure of child poverty can be further divided into two categories: absolute Poverty and relative Poverty, where those who live absolute poverty are those households that have an income below 60% of the median income compared to a rate that changes in line with inflation and was fixed in 2010/11 while those who live in relative poverty are those households that have an income that is below 60% of median income compared to, within the same year, all other incomes. makes absolute poverty better in judging in the UK in the short term. Relative poverty, on the other hand, is better at forecasting long term trends, since general poverty concepts change over time and relative poverty has a better reflection of this (Belfield, 2010, p. 43).
Most researchers and social scientists have criticized the use of income as a measure of child poverty, arguing that it is a direct measurement, since low income is an indicator of poverty. Income as a measure of poverty shows strength in how easy it is to do a comparison between household incomes. For instance, if one household has an average of £100 per day when another household has an average of £10 per day, it is easier to analyze the impact created by the difference in the two incomes.
The use of income-based measures of Poverty in the United Kingdom shows a number of drawbacks. The data used mostly from self-reported income data that many at times could be biased for fear of criticism. The United Kingdom government and the researchers have used 50% of median household income as a measure that makes it an arbitrary threshold that does not actually access whether someone is in poverty since it could easily be adjusted upside or downside.
Results
REFERENCES
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Joseph Rowntree Foundation. (2014). Reducing poverty in the UK: A Collection of Evidence Reviews (pp. 3–177). Retrieved from https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/Reducing-poverty-reviews-FULL_0.pdf
Khan, F., 2004. Deepa Narayan (ed.). Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. United Kingdom: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / the World Bank, 2005. Pages 475. The Pakistan Development Review, 43(3), pp.298-301.
Chambers, R., 2005. Poverty and livelihoods: whose reality counts? Environment and Urbanization, 7(1), pp.173-204.
Assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. 2020. [Online] Available at: <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/789997/households-below-average-income-1994-1995-2017-2018.pdf> [Accessed 23 March 2020].
Department for Work & Pensions, (2019). Households Below Average Income: An analysis of the UK income distribution: 1994/95-2014/15.
Kim, Eunju, 2015. Measuring Multidimensional Child Poverty in the UK: New approach to Measure Material Deprivation of Children. Korea Social Policy Review, 22(3), pp.105-137.
Goodman, A. and Myck, M., 2005. Parental income and child outcomes: What can we learn from material deprivation? pp. 75-89.
Belfield, C., 2010. Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK. 3rd ed. p.43.