The Main Causes of Poverty in the UK - Literature review Example

Lack of money and the long-term experience of poverty is often experienced as a major problem for families. A family is considered to be living in poverty if their income is less than half the national average income wage. This is called the poverty line. A Department of Social Security (DSS) report published by the government in 1994 revealed that 14 million people in the UK were living below the poverty line; 4 million of them were children. This is three times the number recorded in 1979. The causes of poverty are fiercely debated, often (but not only) because ideological issues usually enter the fray. For example, some commentators maintain that certain working-class habits, lead to poverty, while others contend that the market economy impoverishes the working class; for example (it’s argued), by not ‘paying’ fair wages. Both claims are ideological, because they’re based on value judgements and are too general to be empirically tested. Other assertions are supported by empirical evidence. For example, low pay, whether the result of a particular market economy, a public sector ‘agreement’ or another reason, is important cause of some poverty in the UK. Research has proven this to be so, even though there are ideological skirmishes over such matters as what constitutes low pay or whether governments should set a minimum wage. Although empirical explanations of the causes of poverty are generally more reliable than ideological ones, there are also debates among empirical researchers. For example, the impact on poverty of a particular government policy isn’t always clear-cut, and social scientists sometimes have different views about how the ‘facts’ should be interpreted. Despite this last problem, what social scientists can say is “if you accept my poverty line (for example, half the average wage), then you can trust me when I tell you how many people fall below this line and who are therefore poor” Here are some of the main proposed causes (which allegedly, often work in tandem) of poverty in the UK today. We shall discuss all of these causes briefly in our paper: Individual Weakness: This argument, common in New Right, and, increasingly, in New Left circles, isn’t generally supported by the evidence. Although individual factors (for example, sheer laziness) can and do sometimes lead to poverty, demographic, economic and social factors are the main causes. Structures, not individual behaviours, explain most poverty. Anthony Giddens and Simon Griffiths (2006, 365-76) argues that accounts of poverty that explain it as primarily an individual falling lost popularity during the mid-twentieth century, but enjoyed a renaissance, as the political emphasis on entrepreneurship and individual ambition rewarded those who ‘succeeded’ in society, and held those who did not responsible for the circumstances in which they found themselves. Often, explanations for poverty were sought in the lifestyles of poor people, along with the attitudes and outlooks they supposedly espoused. One influential version of this thesis was put forward by the sociologist Charles Murray. Murray (1984) argues that there is an underclass of individual who must take personal responsibility of that poverty. This group forms part of a dependency culture. By this term, Murray refers to poor people who rely on government welfare provision rather than entering the labour market. He argues that the growth of the welfare state has created a subculture that undermines personal ambition and the capacity for self-help. Rather than looking to the future and striving to achieve a better life, the welfare dependent are content accept handouts. Welfare, Murray argues, has eroded people’s incentive to work. Murray does contrast those individuals who must take personal responsibility for their poverty with those who are poor through ‘no fault of their own’ – such as windows, orphans or people who are disabled, for example. A cycle of deprivation: Again quite popular, but not exclusively so, among New Right thinkers, this theory is based on the observation that poverty seems to run in families. If your parents were poor, there’s a greater likelihood that you’ll be poor. Sir Keith Joseph, a prominent Conservative politician in the 1970s, believed that bad habits, leading to fatalistic acceptance of one’s lot in life, are passed on in some poor families. In the 1990s, Treasury evidence showed that the children of the low paid was much more likely, in working life, to be low paid as well. This suggests that there is an economic cycle of deprivation. Welshman (2002) described the cycle of deprivation as ‘a chronological stepping stone’ between the earlier discourses described above and that of the ‘underclass’, which gained ascendancy in the UK in the 1980s and early 1990s. The formation of an underclass: Linked to the preceding point, this view proposes that certain groups in society exhibit maladaptive behaviours – notably fecklessness, reluctance to work, criminal behaviour and lone parenthood – in response to challenging economic and social circumstances. Although the underclass concept is popular in New Right quarters, a 19th-century ‘underclass’ of discharged jailbirds, gambles, organ-grinders, brothel-keepers and the like was described by none other than the Father of Communism, Karl Marx. The ‘underclass’ is the most contested of contemporary poverty discourses in both the academic and the political arenas. It has operated simultaneously as a tool of social scientific construct, but with the frequent blurring of the dividing line between the two. It described an alien ghetto group, stuck at the bottom of society, whose values and behaviour set them apart from mainstream UK (Gans 1995). The controversy centres on the very existence of an ‘underclass’ as well as casual mechanisms and language (Murray 1996, p. 23). A dependency culture: Common across the political spectrum, but less so among the Old Left, here we have the argument that ‘cradle to grave’ welfare encourages the growth of a culture in which some poor growth of a culture in which some poor people depend on benefits rather than finding a job. A new Left version of this perspective is that too much emphasis is being placed on people’s rights to welfare and not enough on their responsibilities to the community. As Standing (1999) points out, in the UK, New Labour’s Minister of State for Social Security, Frank Field, said that the passive benefit system was now “broken-backed, discouraged self-improvement, thrift and independence and rewarded claimants for being either inactive or deceitful”. Standing (1999) continued, there were political demands for an end to “something for nothing” welfare, to change the culture of dependency. Ferrera and Rhodes (2000, p. 4) added to it that labour-market policies should focus more on an active integration or re-integration and less on income support. Government Policies: Between 1979 and 1997, Conservative government policies, say its critics, aggravated the problem of poverty. While one must guard against purely ideological arguments, there’s evidence to suggest that some policies were implicated here. For example, the decision to link benefit levels with prices rather than incomes has meant that many benefits don’t cover real increases in overall living costs. Given the complexity, together with nagging doubts about the reliability of relative measures of poverty, it is not surprising that absolute measures of poverty hold a certain attraction. Does not a single “absolute” line of income, below which people or households can be counted as being in poverty, offer a much more scientific and objective measure than apparently wishy-washy relative definitions. Ken Blackemore and Edwin Griggs (2007, 101) argued that the UK has no such official poverty line. However, there is one commonly used ‘absolute’ definition of poverty, in addition to relative definitions such as the half-average income measured. This is the definition of poverty as having an income that is below the level at which means-tested benefits are payable (p. 101). Low Pay: Although we might think that people in paid employment aren’t poor, low pay is actually a major cause of poverty. The working poor are prominent among those on benefits. Walker et al (1984, 314) argued that the growth of unemployment has tended to distract attention from low pay as a cause of poverty. Nevertheless, the two are intimately connected and low pay is a significant problem affecting many families in the UK. Walker et al (1984, 314) suggested that it is impossible to be certain whether the problem of low pay is worse in the UK than elsewhere in Europe. Much depends on indirect employer benefits as well as exact interpretation of the social wage. The decline of heavy industries: Heavy industries have rapidly declined over the past 20 years, and any employment growth has largely been confined to the service sector. Long-term unemployment is now a fact of life for many Britons and their families, especially in occupational communities that were once centred on coal, steel and shipping. The number of workers households has more than doubled over the past 20 years or so, and lack of work is the primary cause of poverty. Mooney and Scott (2005, p. 93) reported a recent SEU’s reviews of anti-poverty strategy in the UK concluded that “although significant inroads have been made into halting or reversing the worsening of a range of causes and effects of social exclusion there are important challenges for the future of some persistent problems and inequalities remain. Life chances for those born into poverty continue to be far worse than those from more privileged backgrounds, and high concentrations of worklessness remain some areas. There is still a long way to go in tackling social exclusion”. Changing Employment patterns: The demands for a flexible workforce, coupled with poor employment protection, has led to an increase in part-time, insecure, low-paid work. “Casualisation” is taking over from a ‘job for life’. Anthias and Yuval-David (1992) argue that there jobs that the indigenous white population did not want. In the early phrase of post-war immigration, men typically arrived in the UK without their wives and other female relatives. This was especially true of Pakistani men (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1992), which had a subsequent impact on the job opportunities available to Pakistani women. They arrived in the UK later than men and other Asian women, in the late 1960s, and early 1970s, when the economic context had altered. The declining importance of trades unions and of minimum wage protection: Growing disparities in earnings seem to be linked to these factors, but the implementation of a national minimum wage in 1999 has since strengthened wage protection. The price-linking of benefits: In the early 1980s, the link was broken between the value of benefits such as the flat-rate basic state pension and measures of other incomes or earnings. This means that, instead of cash benefits rising in relation to the incomes of those in paid work, they’re generally increased (less generously) each year in the line with price inflation. References: Giddens, Anthony, Griffiths, Simon (2006). Sociology. Polity. Mooney, Gerry, & Scott, Gill (2005) Exploring Social Policy in the ‘new’ Scotland. The Policy Press, pp. 93-100 Blakemore, Ken, & Griggs, Edwin (2007). Social Policy: An introduction. McGraw-Hill International Welshman, J. (2002) 'The Cycle of Deprivation and the Concept of the Underclass', Benefits, 35, 10, 3, 199-205 Gans, Herbert. 1995. The War against the Poor. Basic Books Walker, Robert, & Lawson, Roger, & Townsend, Peter (1984). Responses to Poverty: Lessons from Europe. Dickinson University Press. Standing, G. 1999, Global labour flexibility: seeking distributive justice, Macmillan, Basingstoke Anthias, F. & Yuval-David, N. (1992). It’s all a question of class. Racialized boundaries: Race, nation, gender, colour, and class and the anti-racist struggle (pp. 61-95). New York: Routledge. Murray, R. 1996. Poverty and Social Exclusion in North and South Seminar Series, IDS Seminar Series. Read More