Creating Unequal Futures?

Rethinking poverty, inequality and disadvantage

Peter Saunders, Ruth Fincher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367717834
• eBook ISBN: 9781000256673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

'This is an important and powerful book because of the rigour of the analysis, the good sense of the innovative strategies for action by government, business and civil society, and the concern throughout for social justice.' - John Langmore, Director, UN Division for Social Policy and Development One in six Australian kids live below the poverty line. Among the twenty-five leading industrialised countries, Australia has the fifth highest child poverty rate. This is a useful, if stark, indicator of the extent of long-term disadvantage in this country. Creating Unequal Futures? brings together eight of Australia's leading social scientists to introduce the reader to the processes which create and sustain persistent patterns of poverty and disadvantage. Although the contributors use different approaches, their research leads to a united call for a rethinking away from the prevailing 'gloom and doom' presentations of Australian material life. They signal pathways out of the dilemmas that bind people to poverty and disadvantage. If followed, those pathways will guide us to a future characterised by less inequality. If ignored, we may further entrench patterns of disadvantage and risk creating unequal futures for all Australians.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Figures and tables
• Abbreviations
• 1 The complex contexts of Australian inequality
• 2 Understanding poverty and social exclusion: situating Australia internationally
• 3 Popular discourses and images of poverty and welfare in the news media
• 4 Inequality and the futures of our children
• 5 Tackling poverty among indigenous Australians
• 6 Moving in and out of disadvantage: population mobility and Australian places
• 7 Beyond impoverished visions of the labour market
• References
• Index