Definitions of Poverty

Absolute Poverty

Absolute poverty, also known as subsistence poverty, is usually defined in terms of food, clothing, shelter and health. This concept is used in Drewnowski and Scott's “level of living index”, where nutrition is defined in terms of calories and protein, shelter in terms of quality of dwelling and degrees of overcrowding, and health in terms of infant mortality and the quality of available medical facilities. Some sociologists attempt to include measures of education, security, leisure and recreation as basic cultural needs to be added to the notion of subsistence. However, the obvious criticism of this that in fact all notions of absolute poverty turn out to be applications of the notion of relative poverty. For example, the subsistence level of nutrition is relative to the job and lifestyle of each person. The addition of basic cultural needs also fudges the boundary between absolute and relative poverty. There are also difficulties in defining security, although the number of violent deaths per 1000 is one putative measure.

Budget Standards and Poverty

Seebohm Rowntree conducted a study of poverty in York in 1899 using a definition of poverty close to the concept of absolute poverty. He employed a “budget standards approach”, defining the poverty line in terms of the minimum weekly sum of money required to purchase the minimum necessities. However, he effectively abandoned this approach and moved towards a notion of relative poverty when he conducted further studies in 1936 and 1950. He then included allowances for such things as newspapers, books, radios, beer, tobacco, holidays and presents. Even with this looser standard he showed that the percentage of people in poverty fell to 18% in 1936 and 1.5% in 1950. It would seem that the expanding economy and the redistribution of wealth of the 1950s had virtually eradicated poverty. However, this conclusion has been strongly criticized. Martin Reed argues that the budget approach makes unrealistic assumptions about how 'poor' people spend their money and others argue for an extensive movement towards the use of the notion of relative poverty.

Bradshaw, Mitchell and Morgan argue that the budget standards approach is still useful once it has been modified to take account of its limitations. Thus, to meet the objection that people do not have a no-waste budget, they use data from the family finances survey to estimate how families spend their money. They are interested in the standard of living, provided by the basic supplementary benefit levels (in 1986). They allow for small additional sources of money. But nonetheless they concluded that in 1986 a family with two children under 11 had an income of £74.88 per week, and would not be able to afford a holiday, go to the cinema, buy books, magazines or bicycles. In other words, in 1986, by this standard, the 7 million people in the UK dependent on supplementary benefit were decidedly poor.

Relative poverty

The need to define poverty in relative terms is expressed by Samuel Mencher: “No definition of need, no matter how broad, satisfies the ever changing expectations of modern life.” In Britain Peter Townsend had played a leading role during the 50s, 60s and 70s in making the public aware of the continuing existence of poverty. He rejects the state's standard of poverty, defined in terms of supplementary benefits, as arbitrary. He also rejects the relative income standard of poverty, whereby poverty is defined as an income less than 50% of the national average. This is also arbitrary and, for example, in Sweden, where the welfare system is more developed, the poor would be better off under this definition than the poor in Britain. Thus, he defines poverty in terms of relative deprivation as follows: “Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from the ordinary living patters, customs and activities.”

The deprivation index

In order to 'objectify' this measure of poverty, Townsend created a deprivation index. From an initial list of 60 items he selected 12 that are key indicators of deprivation. These are (1) a week's holiday away from home; (2) for adults — having a friend or relative to home to eat in the last 4 weeks; (3) for adults — going out or visiting a friend or relative in the last 4 weeks; (4) for children — having a friend to play in the last 4 weeks; (5) for children — not having a party on their last birthday; (6) not going out for entertainment in the last 2 weeks; (7) not having fresh meat at least 4 times a week; (8) not having a cooked meal one day in a fortnight; (9) not having a cooked breakfast most days of the week; (10) not having a house with a refrigerator; (11) where the household does not usually have a Sunday joint; (12) where the household lacks the sole use of four key amenities: flush w/c, sink/washbasin, fixed bath/shower, gas/electric cooker.

Townsend claims that when deprivation is measured by these criteria there is a marked increase in deprivation at a level below 150% of the basic supplementary benefit. An obvious criticism of this is that the list does not take into account individual preferences. For example, this list would make every vegetarian poor, which is absurd. However, with qualifications, the list may still be valid as measure of a certain standard of normality, and the exclusion from normality because of poverty. Effectively, Townsend's list says that a bad social life is an indicator of poverty. Another criticism raised by Sen is that poverty must include some element of absolute poverty, especially when discussing poverty in the third world. According to Townsend, in 1968/69 22.9% (12.46 million) of the population were in relative poverty, compared to 9.2% according to the relative income standard.

The London Study

In his more recent work Townsend modified his concept of deprivation. Firstly, he divided deprivation into two indicators — material deprivation, covering such things as food and shelter, and social deprivation, covering such things as unemployment and social life. Secondly, he made allowances for differences of taste —for example, vegetarians were asked different questions from non-vegetarians. His aim was to establish “standard or majority norms, conventions or customs”. He also distinguished between objective deprivation, as measured by his index, and subjective deprivation being that level of income that respondents felt was necessary to escape poverty.

By this means he found that the level of income required to escape poverty ranged from 203% of supplementary benefit for a single person under 60 to 150% for a couple with three children. There was a high degree of agreement between the “objective” and “subjective” measures of poverty.

Poor Britain

Johanna Mack and Stewart Lansley conducted research commissioned by London Weekend Television. Their study was called Poor Britain. They adopted a deprivation index approach but modified it by (1) distinguishing between lifestyles that are chosen and lifestyles that cannot be afforded; (2) excluding the lack of a television set, since very few people did lack one; (3) attempting to avoid having an arbitrary list by conducting a survey of what respondents believed were necessities in contemporary Britain. An item would be classified as a necessity if more than 50% of the respondents said it was. They created a deprivation index of 22 items. They defined poverty as “an enforced lack of socially perceived necessities.” The classed those people as poor who lacked three or more items on the index.

Their sample in 1983 comprised 1,174 people, and they concluded that there were 7.5 million people in poverty in Britain — 5 million adults and 2.5 million children — or 13.8% of the population. They argued that the policies of Thatcher would increase poverty — for example they noted that the share of national earnings from employment received by the poorest 40% of the population had fallen from 15.6% in 1965 to 10.2% in 1976.

They conducted a second survey in 1990, using a sample of 1,800 people. They added some items to the list. They discovered that in 1990 there were 11 million people in poverty, and the number in severe poverty (lacking more than 7 items in the list) had risen from 2.5 million in 1983 to 3.5 million in 1990. Of those in poverty 2/3rds were dependent on state benefits. They noted that pensions were indexed to prices not wages, so pensioners were becoming poorer in relative terms. Thus the proportion of the poor who were pensioners increased from 10% in 1983 to 20% in 1990. Other benefits had failed to keep pace with national earnings. Two-thirds of single parents were poor in 1990 compared to half in 1983.

Since the second survey included new items in the list, the two findings are not strictly comparable, and it is not strictly possible to infer that there has been an increase in poverty. Whilst the researchers have tried to make the items in the deprivation list reflect the opinions of the “people” there have still had to make “expert” choices in the definition of poverty — for example, defining poverty as lacking three items in the list rather than 2 or 4. Pichaud has also argued that poverty can be self-inflicted — for example, when people do not buy adequate food because they are addicted to cigarettes.