Poverty and State Intervention - Essay Example

The welfare state in UK confronts assault with the crumpling of the past in a new fashion, since the nature of the welfare state had been attacked since the Victorian era. The social democrats have often criticized the welfare state the most, although disparagement has been driven from both the right and left wing. Researches show that the welfare state has been unable to fulfil the duty of reducing poverty. The gap between the rich and the poor in UK is increasing with the passage of time. This was not the case in the Victorian age.

Things have worsened since then (Spicker 2002). It has become a persistent facet of argument against the welfare state’s failure but the reasons for this decline are contradictory. These oppositional reasons are given by the social democratic parties and neo-liberalists. The disloyalty of the welfare state resulted in the dishevelled poor’s situation. It is for this reason that the neo-liberalists considered the welfare state to be far worse than the free market (Spicker 1993). Those who rely on the welfare end up indolent and de-motivated to seek work.

Eventually there is a vicious cycle of dependency that people are unable to escape because there is no higher salary to be paid and people are unable to counter high taxation (Barr 1992). It is argued that because of this trend of welfare state in the UK, the Oil Crisis has occurred (King 2000). Poverty, especially child poverty has remained “stubbornly high” in Britain despite the fact that it was the first to have introduced its welfare state. With the recent reforms such as “child tax credit” this inconsistency might reduce.

In recent years, however, UK poverty rates have dropped remarkably low as studied by Professor of the London School of Economics, John Hills. There is a possibility, though, that the pensioner poverty may regain strength because of low state pension (Schifferes 2005). The pensions started to be paid from 1965 along with the introduction of the window’s benefits. The period of war was very crucial as it led to unemployment (Field 2010). Victorian age people took years to find out the reason of poverty in their times.

It was the time of the rise of industrialization and by 19th century people start to ponder on the effects of this on the people; whether it was depriving or improving the living standards of the people (De Pennington 2011). As De Pennington describes that era by stating, “For the first half of the 19th century the rural and urban poor had much in common: unsanitary and overcrowded housing, low wages, poor diet, insecure employment and the dreaded effects of sickness and old age.” (De Pennington 2011) This tempo was broken by 1851and the unskilled felt threatened by the low salaries “irregular income” (De Pennington 2011).

As the institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) was established in the late 19th century, it helped researchers gain insight into the social changes taking place in all strata of the society. Osberg claims that poverty over a period of time can be best analysed through the index of “poverty intensity” instead of poverty rate. He then proposes an equation to measure the intensity to rule out any misleading results which may also reduce the possibility of threats to the welfare (Osberg 2002).

Certain government interventions create a