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Defining Poverty

Sociology: AQA GCSE, topic 5.2.1

Defining and Measuring Poverty

Poverty is defined in two broad ways: absolute and relative poverty.

Wealth and income

Wealth and income

  • Stratification involves the unequal distribution of resources, including wealth and income.
  • Wealth refers to the ownership of assets such as houses and land as well as savings and shares.
  • Income refers to the flow of resources the individuals and households receive over a specific period of time, such as a monthly salary.
Defining poverty

Defining poverty

  • Poverty is defined in two broad ways: absolute and relative poverty.
    • Absolute poverty is when income is insufficient to obtain the minimum needed to survive.
    • Relative poverty is when income is well below average, so that people are poor in comparison to others.
Social exclusion

Social exclusion

  • Poverty can include social exclusion, when people are shut out of everyday activities and customs.
  • Therefore poverty can become as much about being cut off as it does low income.
Measuring poverty

Measuring poverty

  • The UK government measures poverty in terms of low incomes and this is defined as 60 percent of the median (or middle point) income of the population after housing costs.
Subjective poverty

Subjective poverty

  • Subjective poverty is based on whether people see themselves as living in poverty.
Environmental poverty

Environmental poverty

  • Environmental poverty measures deprivation in terms of conditions such as inadequate housing and air pollution.

Relative Poverty

Townsend developed a deprivation index to measure relative deprivation that listed 12 items to discover how many people were living in poverty in the UK.

Townsend

Townsend

  • Peter Townsend (1979) wanted to discover how many people were living in poverty in the UK.
  • Townsend developed a deprivation index to measure relative deprivation that listed 12 items, including, ‘Household does not usually have a Sunday joint (3 in 4 times)’.
Findings

Findings

  • Townsend found that nearly 23 percent of the UK population were in poverty.
  • This was much higher than that based on the state standard of poverty (6.1 percent) and the relative standard of poverty (9 percent).
Criticisms of Townsend

Criticisms of Townsend

  • Critics question some of the items on the list and how they were selected.
  • For example not eating meat (a Sunday joint) regularly is not necessarily linked to deprivation and may be linked to religious beliefs.
  • If the index is inadequate, then the statistics based on it are unlikely to be valid.

Test yourself on Defining Poverty

  • Who developed a deprivation index to measure relative deprivation that listed 12 items to discover how many people were living in poverty in the UK?

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