Poverty:
- Constructed using both quantitative and qualitative data.
- Definitions often involve comparing poor with the non-poor.
- Constructions of those in poverty influenced by various factors – ideology, language
etc.
Effects a significant amount of people: 13.4 million people in the UK in relative poverty
(below poverty line, earn <60% of median UK household income) after housing costs
(removed from equation).
Captures public attention and seen to require social intervention: Consistently captures
public attention in need of intervention, e.g., energy bills.
Likely to threaten cherished social values: Importance of human dignity which poverty can
prevent.
Social Constructions and Poverty:
3 main constructions:
1. Poverty is natural and inevitable
2. Poverty is caused by the behaviours of the poor themselves.
3. Consequence of wider economic and political causes – victims of the system.
Construction impacts on how policy responds.
‘Poor children grow up to be poor adults’
Policy Framing of Poverty:
- Prior to 20th century: Old Poor Laws: Elizabethan Poor Law (1601) – relief for
deserving (e.g., war veterans, pregnant women) poor as the rich found them
unaesthetic.
- Workhouse system for the undeserving (able to work) poor. Made so bad that
people wouldn’t depend on it. Would be fed and given somewhere to sleep.
- Focus on regulation of the poor.
- From 20th century: Social inequalities as a cause of poverty – Fabian Society
- Focus on redistribution rather than regulation – giving money to the poor from the
rich.
- Beveridge Report (1942) – Economist, state should support people in poverty, all
political parties supported at the time.
- Five Giants: Want, Idleness (unemployment not people’s fault), Squalor (Awful
housing), Disease (health), Ignorance (Education for longer)
- Policy response: Creation of Welfare State after war finished – set of social
programmes that state delivers for our needs; education, health, social security,
housing and social care for disabled/vulnerable. Mass nationalisation of services
(state owned) such as trains, phoneline – helped give people jobs.
- Constructed using both quantitative and qualitative data.
- Definitions often involve comparing poor with the non-poor.
- Constructions of those in poverty influenced by various factors – ideology, language
etc.
Effects a significant amount of people: 13.4 million people in the UK in relative poverty
(below poverty line, earn <60% of median UK household income) after housing costs
(removed from equation).
Captures public attention and seen to require social intervention: Consistently captures
public attention in need of intervention, e.g., energy bills.
Likely to threaten cherished social values: Importance of human dignity which poverty can
prevent.
Social Constructions and Poverty:
3 main constructions:
1. Poverty is natural and inevitable
2. Poverty is caused by the behaviours of the poor themselves.
3. Consequence of wider economic and political causes – victims of the system.
Construction impacts on how policy responds.
‘Poor children grow up to be poor adults’
Policy Framing of Poverty:
- Prior to 20th century: Old Poor Laws: Elizabethan Poor Law (1601) – relief for
deserving (e.g., war veterans, pregnant women) poor as the rich found them
unaesthetic.
- Workhouse system for the undeserving (able to work) poor. Made so bad that
people wouldn’t depend on it. Would be fed and given somewhere to sleep.
- Focus on regulation of the poor.
- From 20th century: Social inequalities as a cause of poverty – Fabian Society
- Focus on redistribution rather than regulation – giving money to the poor from the
rich.
- Beveridge Report (1942) – Economist, state should support people in poverty, all
political parties supported at the time.
- Five Giants: Want, Idleness (unemployment not people’s fault), Squalor (Awful
housing), Disease (health), Ignorance (Education for longer)
- Policy response: Creation of Welfare State after war finished – set of social
programmes that state delivers for our needs; education, health, social security,
housing and social care for disabled/vulnerable. Mass nationalisation of services
(state owned) such as trains, phoneline – helped give people jobs.
