A new campaign is raising awareness of the social impact of inequality - and you can help.
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Jeremy Cliffe is a contributing editor at Shifting Grounds; he writes here in a personal capacity
The distinction between absolute and relative poverty is once more in the news. Just this week, Unicef published a new report warning UK child poverty is set to rise, accusing the government of delivering a ‘catastrophic blow to the futures of thousands of children’.
The conclusion is consistent with last autumn’s IFS forecast predicting some 400,000 people will be pulled under the poverty line by government cuts, and that by 2020, a third or more of British children will live in poverty.
One of the targets set by the 2010 Child Poverty Act is for the child poverty rate before housing costs to be under 10 per cent by 2020, so the government is set to move in completely the wrong direction and reverse the major reductions in child poverty that took place between 1998 and 2020.
But some speculate the government intends to abandon the commitments enshrined in the 2010 legislation. The definition of child poverty used in the Act – relative low income poverty, absolute low income poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation – have been grossly misrepresented.
Critics wrongly suggest the relative measure (set at 60% of median household income) is the only measure used in the Act, ignoring the other three.
They also suggest it is statistically impossible to meet the relative measure, but this assertion is based on a basic error of GCSE level mathematics, confusing the median (the middle income) with the mean (the average income). The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), close to work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, this week called the Child Poverty Act targets “crude and flawed”.
But they did so on the basis of the errors just described, along with several other errors that have been pointed out by the Child Poverty Action Group in their blog piece on the CSJ report.
Of course, ‘absolute poverty’ – the fulfilment of base needs – matters, which is why the Child Poverty Act has a target for it too. But various ‘absolute’ measures (crime, social mobility, health, violence, teenage pregnancy) correlate closely to relative poverty: to the level of inequality in a society.
This is the thesis of The Spirit Level, a book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett that, according to The Sunday Times, contains “a big idea, big enough to change political thinking”. Using evidence that, to quote The Economist, is “painstakingly marshalled” and “hard to dispute”, the book demonstrates a clear relationship between inequality and a whole range of social ills.
• UK success on child poverty threatened by austerity programme 29 May 2012
• Britain 2012: Some families have only £2 per person per day for food 5 Mar 2012
• The right’s attack on child poverty targets shows their ignorance 15 Dec 2011
• The coalition is actively increasing child poverty 11 Oct 2011
• How poor children will get poorer on Cameron’s watch 11 Oct 2011
It shows, for example, that levels of imprisonment, drug abuse and mental illness are higher in unequal societies, and that levels of social mobility, trust and health are lower. Why? As the gap between rich and poor grows, society becomes more hierarchical, bonds of community break down and anxiety, rivalry and insecurity mount.
In such stratified societies, children are especially susceptible to the effects. They are more likely to suffer from obesity, bullying, and low educational attainment. Girls are more likely to become teenage mothers, and boys to be drawn into violence.
This inevitably blights the poorest most, which is why ‘child poverty’ should be expressed as a relative condition. If poverty means living on the wrong side of town, this study shows that it is markedly worse when ‘town’ is divided and segmented by income differences.
But this does not just apply to the disadvantaged. High levels of relative poverty make everyone worse off. Take Unicef’s ranking of child well-being in twenty-one developed countries (in which the UK comes last); The Spirit Level reveals that this index correlates not – as one might expect – to average living standards, but to inequality. The book shows that its detrimental effects go right up the income scale.
The CSJ argues that the relative child poverty measure ‘confuses poverty with inequality’, brushing aside the latter as ‘inevitable in a free society’. It calls for a focus on the ‘underlying causes of blighted young lives, such as family breakdown, welfare dependency and educational failure, rather than the symptoms of low relative income’.
In doing so, it betrays an all-too common attitude: that the size of the gap per se has no bearing on the impoverished condition of those children at the bottom; that ‘the symptoms of low relative income’ are fundamentally distinct from these broader social problems.
The findings articulated by Wilkinson and Pickett in The Spirit Level show why anti-poverty policies built on these assumptions are doomed to fail. To tackle child poverty is to tackle the exclusion of young people from the common experiences and accepted living standards of a given society; a pernicious yet relative condition.
Yet the CSJ’s comments exemplify a widespread ignorance of the social consequences of inequality in the UK (higher, and growing faster, than in almost any other developed economy). Addressing the awareness gap is a crucial first step towards closing the income gap.
That is why a team led by Katharine Round are currently raising money to make The Spirit Level into an international documentary. Drawing inspiration from such agenda-setting titles as An Inconvenient Truth and The Age of Stupid, this promises to communicate the effects of inequality, on children and others, in a format that can be screened in cinemas and on television, spread via social networks and shown to policy-makers.
The film will blend hard evidence with human tales from around the globe. The aims: spread the word, spark action, and achieve real, tangible change.
Those interested in backing the campaign can do so in several ways:
• If just 2,500 people pre-buy a download, it will meet its £30,000 target; with one month left to go, the campaign is already over halfway there. But this is not about money.
• Supporters are equally urged to link to the campaign website, share and re-tweet the Facebook and Twitter pages, and sign up for the mailing list.
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
47 Responses to “Child poverty: Absolute and relative”
Coryn Barclay
If the govt stops measuring relative poverty, we'll all be worse off, says @JeremyCliffe http://t.co/puPProFK via @leftfootfwd
Coryn Barclay
If the govt stops measuring relative poverty, we'll all be worse off, says @JeremyCliffe http://t.co/puPProFK via @leftfootfwd
HullRePublic
For @vernonsboots #spiritlevel: RT @leftfootfwd Child poverty: Absolute and relative: http://t.co/Iv9fdgfL
HullRePublic
For @vernonsboots #spiritlevel: RT @leftfootfwd Child poverty: Absolute and relative: http://t.co/Iv9fdgfL
Eileen CCampos
Child poverty: Absolute and relative: http://t.co/Sx4x1VCI by @JeremyCliffe