poverty; people's theories

• regarding absolute poverty;

  Charles Booth (in the UK): compiled a basic of essential items.

  Collier (2007): tried to see who are the billion poorest people in the world, and says is it better to scatter help through out the world or just for the poorest billion.
• Lister (2004): talks about the importance of living in poverty in terms of material and non-material factors.
• Lister (2004): states that many policy makers and designers design things without certain people in mind. people may be excluded because of reactions or decisions taken by others e.g. not employing someone because of their ethnicity. These exclusions may be intentional or unintentional
• Byrne (1999): there tends to be a relationships between the excluded and those who exclude – like in politics, if you don’t find a party that satisfies your needs, you can make your own party (in a democratic system).
• Veit-Wilson (1998): talked about weak and strong version of exclusion. A weak one is one that seeks to include the excluded. The strong version is the same but also seek to address the issue/s of how powerful groups in society exclude others.
• Lister points out that poverty is still central for helping us understand this disadvantage.
• PSE survey (2000): Gordon et al; defined 4 types of social exclusion –

  1)     Exclusion from adequate income (benefits etc)

  2)     Exclusion from the labour market (cannot work)

  3)     Exclusion from services

  4)     Exclusion from social relations (not having friends, family, outlet to spend time, network, not knowing neighbours etc.)
• Curry (1998): young people who are socially excluded (bad schools, no employment etc) struggle even more to meet these legitimate means and turn to crime. The standard is high so you turn to illegitimate means to get it
• McAuley (2006): offers an alternative explanation – young people in deprived areas don’t want to have to use other means to get things (illegitimate means) like work and education but because of their backgrounds, they are stigmatized and victimized. (they don’t want to be part of the underclass) victimized in schools and jobs because of who they are and where they come from.
• McAuley also argues that a big reason for the link between crime and poor communities is that consumer society is always pushing the bar higher up and even further the people in poverty will then grow as a rate.
• (regarding welfare) Marshall (1973): develops the idea of 3 stages of citizenship which resulted from the development of peoples' rights.
• Marshall:

  1. civil rights (1700s): certain things like freedom of expression, speech and faith were introduced as rights. people should have a protected level of liberty (these were still limited) as people stated to question the idea of killing or hurting someone just because of their different opinions or likes
• Marshall:

  2. political rights (1800s): idea that every citizen should have a vote including women at the very end. the idea that you had a right to be involved in politics, could participate in political processes and activities rather than having a ruler which came from generations -> they would instead vote for a leader
• Marshall:

  3. social rights (1900s): includes guarantees to education, healthcare, pensions, and housing schemes which provide them with the right to live a full and active life -> participating in social and cultural affairs. people should not be plunged into poverty and stay poor. also a raise to work and pay equality
• for Marshall; the granting of rights for all citizens stems from the idea of equality. all people have a right to live a decent life
• Murray (1989, 1990) & Marsland (1989): the universal welfare state has created a culture of dependency – people rely on benefits. They also say that welfare has created an underclass (the under class and working class were separated into those who work and those who are reliant on welfare – both don’t have access to certain wealth but still go against each other after creating the term of the underclass)  they are people who are excluded from the rest of society and lives off of welfare. These are the people with a lot of stigma and stereotypes
• Murray (1989, 1990) & Marsland (1989): The generosity of the welfare state explains laziness and dependence as well as single parenthood. The new right tend to blame the people for their situation. They support the privatisation of private services like hospitals, since they are seen to be more efficient. They said that taxes should be kept to a minimum so people should pay very little in tax so that people who work are not paying for those who do not and could (less welfare + less taxes) and benefits should only be given to the deserving poor.
• Marsland in 89, argues that we shouldn’t give ‘handouts’ as the poor would take advantage of it and not work for it. He said that the money we spend in investing in benefits, we should just make sure there is enough employment and jobs in a country – welfare should only be given to those who pass the means test.
• Rutter and Madge (1976): show that actually half the children brought up in poverty don't actually repeat the poverty themselves
• a very early work on this explanation was;

  Tawney (1931): looked at the system and said that poverty is also a consequence of the systems that maintain it - to have wealth you have to have poverty, for some people to have a lot of money, you need people to either have a bit of money or none at all. He said that we shouldn't want hyper wealth or hyper poverty as they are both dehumanizing. blaming the poor will not solve the problem. poverty will only be reduced through policy measure which ensure the redistribution of wealth.
• Wilson (1996): argued that the persistence of poverty in American cities was due to structural economic changes. low paying jobs in the service sector like waitressing, cleaning etc. being available. this goes hand in hand with the idea of the suburbanisation of employment (jobs don't stay in the city, the go to the suburbs).
• Wilson: black Americans are worse hit by poverty. there is a concentration in American black neighorhoods
• Hutton (1995): in Britain, as a result of economic changes, there were new social divisions, because of economic changes, more/different groups of people are finding themselves to be in poverty, he argued that the UK became a 30/30/40 -> 30% disadvantaged, 30% marginalised insecure, 40% privileged. people have fallen into these groups because of economic changes in the 70s and 80s
• 30% disadvantaged: those who were out of work but looking for jobs which would likely end up being insecure and not long term
• 30% marginalised insecure: had jobs but due to economic changes in the country, their contracts became weaker and the power of trade unions had lessened. as a result, their pay decreased and their job insecurity increased
• 40% privileged: doesn't mean the rich but those who have stable, full-time employment or self-employed. they can guarantee that they have a job next month
• Hutton also linked economic disadvantaged of these groups to other social problems. he argues that those who work long hours with low pay (like marginalised 30%) are more likely to experience marital and parental problems.
• both Wilson and Hutton say you cannot blame individuals for poverty, and poverty needs to be seen within the context of cultural and social economic shifts.
• Coats and Silburn; two important theories; the cycle of deprivation in 1970. this cycle says that poverty brings more poverty, that the circumstances of poverty keep the poor trapped regardless of if they want to be or are hard working or not. why? being poor costs money as the poor may have to pay for certain things more than once e.g. buying an expensive pair of shoes that last long is not an option, so they have to take long term expenses
• the cycle of deprivation cont.: it is difficult to get loans from banks to escape the cycle, as to get a loan you have to have a stable job. this theory suggests that one element of poverty leads to another element of poverty. a problem is it explains why poverty stays but it doesn't explain what causes it in the first place.
• Coats and Silburn; poverty trap theory - says that the welfare state has managed to improve peoples' lives but there are still people who are materially deprived. welfare did not manage to eradicate poverty because the benefit levels are too low to lift people out of poverty - they help but not enough to get you out of poverty. they set a trap that poor people cannot escape. this can link back to the people who are the 'underclass'.
• Townsend and Field say that its not just the underclass being unable to escape from poverty but also cannot get past their disadvantages like singles mothers, elderly etc. migrants can also now form part of this group - don't have access to the labour market and they take what they can get
• Weberian perspective; weber – people have different market situations, he says that people get rewards according to what they offer on the market with skills, qualifications and experience. He says that the poor are poor as they have a weak market situation. Somewhere in between the cultural explanations and material explanations of poverty (individuals or system?) they have common skills so they are not as good as other people wanting the job they want.
• David and Moore argue that some jobs are simply more important and people should be rewarded for that. They say that some jobs have more importance so people who do, should be rewarded accordingly. Unequal rewards motive the best people to strive for success – that’s why there should be a system of unequal rewards (reason why people should stay poor)
• Esping-Anderson: 3 worlds of welfare capitalism : he looked at how welfare is divided up around the entire world (didn’t look at every country but majority). He focused on the West – pension, unemployment, benefits etc. as well as the level of protection that the government offers their country. He looked at the west and divided them into 3 welfare regimes
• Esping-Anderson: he looked at the value or decommodification – refers to whether there is a high level of welfare to support you – the more a country is decommodified, the less you have to pay e.g. Mater Dei takes care of you from the taxes but St. James is commodified -> you need to pay. Malta is not an example for this as he looked at the West specifically
• 1) social democratic – high level of decommodification -> welfare is provided universally by the state. Universalism; refers to the idea that no matter who you are, as long as you have permission of benefits or you are a citizen, there is a duty to be taken care of from the state (basic level of well-being) a system based on a believe of social equality, welfare services are either funded by the state or paid in a portion from the state. It is a system found in many Nordic countries (taxes are found to be very high but the benefits are very good).
• 2) conservative corporatist – mixture of market based and social democratic systems and is seen through out the world. In this model, welfare systems may be decommodified or not as liberal as the states, but are still very much tied to work or the family – people are entitled to benefits depending on their position in society.
• 2) conservative corporatist – a lot of these policies are more beneficial if you are married, widowed etc. the aim is not to reduce inequality but to make sure we keep a similar distance. It maintains status differences. It seeks to maintain social stability, traditional family life and loyalty to the state.
• 3) liberal/ market based– high level of commodification -> things are sold on the free market. (liberal in this case is not with social rights but with financial liberalism – idea that the government and capitalist market should be separate)  people should take care of themselves through capitalism (works for things like clothes but things like healthcare or education aren’t given unless you have the money for it) help/welfare is only reserved for the very poor and often means tested. Unfortunately this means that people who receive this welfare are mostly stigmatized.