Introduction to Social Security

Policies, Benefits and Poverty

John Ditch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134611348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Social Security forms a major area of government policy and social expenditure. Government activity in this area impacts directly on all citizens, and consequently social security policy is the focus for much debate. People are affected by social security whether by funding it through taxation, or using it when claiming unemployment or other benefits. Introduction to Social Security is an up-to-date text on this important and complex social policy issue. It provides a second introduction for students of social policy and administration and includes contributions from some of the best known and most respected names in the field.

1 The nature of poverty

Jonathan Bradshaw

DOI: 10.4324/9780203014752-2

The relief of poverty is not the only objective of social security policy. Nor is social security policy the only element of social policy to have a bearing on poverty. Nevertheless, the extent to which poverty is relieved by social security and other policies is a crucial test of their effectiveness. It is partly for this reason that poverty has always been a core preoccupation in the study of social policy. This chapter will seek to explain why poverty is important. It will then discuss the conceptual and practical difficulties involved in defining poverty. Then it will review evidence on the existence of poverty in the UK, how the level of poverty has changed in the recent past and how poverty in the UK compares with some other countries. The conclusion will briefly discuss why poverty is still a major scourge in our society and what can be done about it.

Why is poverty important?

Poverty is what philosophers describe as a categorical need, that is, a need which must be met in order for a person to develop properly as human being. Of course there is a good deal of debate about what constitutes a categorical need. Some philosophers do not accept that they exist at all (Barry, 1965). Some would restrict them to an ‘irreducible absolutist core’ – health, nutrition and shelter (Sen, 1983) and others seek to include in the idea autonomy or the capacity or freedom to choose (Doyal and Gough, 1991) or the ability to participate (Townsend, 1979). However, the essence of a categorical need is that it gives the poor a moral claim for action. As fellow human beings, we have an obligation to meet the needs of the poor. If we describe someone as poor we are saying that (subject to some reservations about the cause of their poverty and their liberty to be poor if they want to) they are in need and that their need should be met. It is therefore extremely important to use the words poor and poverty with some precision.

There are two other reasons to be preoccupied with poverty. First, poverty is not merely a problem experienced by an individual or group. We all suffer from it. Poverty is associated with all the most important problems in our society. They are problems because they affect us all. We are not just morally diminished by the sight of beggars on our streets or children undernourished or elderly people living in cold conditions. Our own lives are influenced by the fact that many of our fellow human beings are unable to flourish. Of course, the association between poverty and other social problems is not inevitable and the direction of the association is not always clear – poverty is both a cause and an effect of other problems. Indeed, poverty is commonly associated with not one but many other problems – deprivation is multiple. But an assault on poverty is an assault on many other social concerns. Indeed, it may be the most effective means of dealing with other problems. For example, it is now being argued that the main gains still to be made in the health of the nation are not going to be achieved by improving health services, or even behaving more healthily, but rather by improving the living standards of the poor and reducing stresses associated with inequalities (Quick and Wilkinson, 1991; Townsend et al., 1992). To use the language of Beveridge's giants (1942); by relieving Want we can have an impact on Disease, Squalor, Ignorance and Idleness.

Second, poverty is probably the best symptom we have of the failure of our welfare state. Although not all social security policies in this country, and certainly not in other European welfare states, are concerned exclusively with poverty relief, whatever the origins and intentions of social policies, it is still the most important goal of any welfare state to reduce poverty. If a welfare state fails to do so, then it is important to find out why. Thus poverty is an outcome measure of welfare state effort and the study of poverty is an important component in helping us to understand the performance of social security systems, wider distributional arrangements and (ultimately) welfare states.

The definition of poverty

Unlike some other countries (see for example Citro and Michael, 1995) the UK has no generally accepted definition of poverty or poverty standard and (ironically) this is one reason why debate about poverty in the UK is so preoccupied with definitions. It is important to distinguish two rather different, albeit connected, debates. The first is about the concept of poverty – what it means, what it is. The second is concerned with how that concept is operationalised – how poverty is measured. The latter will be dealt with in the next section.

The main argument about the concept of poverty has centred on whether it is an absolute or a relative notion. Charles Booth (1889–1902) provided an estimate of the minimum income needed to maintain a family and used it to define those living in poverty. Seebohm Rowntree adapted Booth's methods and (perhaps wrongly, see Veit-Wilson, 1986) can be described as the father of the absolutist notion of poverty. In his first study of poverty in York (1901), Rowntree developed a poverty standard based on an estimate of the expenditure required for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency. Drawing on the newly emerging nutritional science, Rowntree formulated a diet which was required to maintain physical effort. He then priced the components of this diet, allowing for variations in consumption by women and children, at the lowest prevailing prices in York. To this he added minimal expenditure for housing, clothing and fuel. In his first study, Rowntree certainly equated poverty with physical necessities and the utmost economy was to be practised in purchasing the necessities.

Nevertheless Rowntree did not approve or advocate his poverty standard. His whole study was designed to draw attention to the plight of the poor (Veit Wilson, 1986). He followed his first study with two further studies of poverty in York in 1936 and 1950 (Rowntree, 1941; Rowntree and Lavers, 1951). It is significant that in the later studies he varied slightly from his original definition, adding a few items to the list of necessary household items which had nothing to do with physical efficiency – such as beer and tobacco. So even Rowntree, who has been acknowledged as the founder of the absolute (minimum subsistence) measure of poverty, in fact found it impossible to sustain either an absolute or purely physical standard over time.

The subsistence notion of poverty wa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The nature of poverty
• 2 The aims of social security
• 3 Development of social security
• 4 Poverty and the adequacy of social security
• 5 British pensions policies
• 6 Claiming entitlements
• 7 Social security, poverty and disability
• 8 Social security and poverty
• 9 ‘Race', social security and poverty
• 10 Poverty and social security in the European Union
• Index