Consensual method

The consensual or ‘perceived deprivation’ approach to measuring poverty follows the deprivation approach to measuring poverty by looking at direct measures of living standards rather than indirect income measures (see Deprivation and poverty). But in this approach, deprivation is seen in terms of an enforced lack of ‘necessities’ as determined by public opinion.

This approach was pioneered in the 1983 Breadline Britain survey and has since been developed and refined, in particular through the Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) survey in 1999. It forms the basis of the current Poverty and Social Exclusion survey to be carried out in 2011.

In this approach, the first step is to test various items from a wide range of aspects that make up our standard of living to see which items most people see to be ‘necessities’ – something which everyone should be able to afford and which no one should have to do without. The items tested cover both material and social aspects of life, including food, clothing, health, housing, household goods, personal possessions, relations with family and friends, social and leisure activities, savings and financial security. The current PSE research will again carry out a detailed survey of what is seen as a necessity in the UK today, looking both at items previously tested and new items that reflect recent changes to our way of life. The necessities survey allows you to give your views on what is a necessity.

Having identified publicly perceived necessities, the consensual method proceeds to find out who lacks these necessities. In this approach, individual lifestyle choices are allowed for by distinguishing between those who lack necessities through lack of income and resources and those who choose not to have these items. From this you can examine the living standards for all groups in society in terms of their enforced lack of necessities. This provides a comprehensive measure of relative deprivation – the more necessities a household is forced to do without, the more they are deprived.

A ‘poverty threshold’ is then calculated using a range of sequential statistical procedures to relate the number of necessities lacking in a household to the incomes of households, adjusted to take into account household composition and size (household equivalised income). Those who lack necessities through choice are already excluded so we look at only those who perceive themselves to have an ‘enforced’ lack of necessities. However there is, nevertheless, a drift up the income scale of those who have an enforced lack of a necessity. There are good reasons for this; people who have been on low incomes and are now on higher incomes will not have as high a standard of living as those who have been on similar incomes for a long period of time.

The procedure is designed to find the level of deprivation that maximises the differences between the ‘poor’ and the ‘not poor’, and minimise the differences within these groups. In the studies undertaken to date, a clear separation between ‘poor’ households and ‘not poor’ households has been found to fall at the lack of between two and three necessities for every type of household (see PSE past results ). An examination of those within this ‘poor’ group finds that these households are suffering multiple deprivation, which affects their whole way of life – they can be seen to be living in ‘poverty’.

The consensual approach was developed through four major surveys:

• 1983 Breadline Britain Survey
• 1990 Breadline Britain Survey of Britain
• 1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey
• 2002 Poverty and Social Exclusion in Northern Ireland

The Poverty and Social Exclusion survey that will take place in the United Kingdom in 2011 will extend this work.

Theoretical underpinning

The development of the theoretical underpinning of this approach to poverty measurement through the Breadline Britain and PSE surveys can be found in:

• ‘How poor is too poor? Defining poverty’ by Joanna Mack (Poor Britain, Mack and Lansley, 1985). In this chapter, Mack set out the ‘consensual’ approach to poverty and its academic underpinning. The 1983 Breadline Britain survey (reported in Poor Britain) pioneered the use of publicly perceived necessities to identify a ‘consensus’ on what minimum living standards should be. The indicators tested, following Townsend and others, included social as well as material aspects of living. But, unlike previous approaches, the items identified as necessities were chosen by majority public opinion and not by, on the one hand, the views of experts or, on the other hand, norms of behaviour. The survey also introduced the concept of choice: only those who were deprived of these necessities through lack of money rather than choice were included. Poverty was thus defined as ‘an enforced lack of socially perceived necessities’.
• ‘Measuring poverty’ by David Gordon and Christina Pantazis (Breadline Britain in the 1990s, Gordon and Pantazis, 1997). The authors set out a more rigorous approach to analysing the relationship between deprivation (as identified by an enforced lack of socially perceived necessities) and poverty thresholds. This extract examines first the reliability of the necessity questions tested as indicators of deprivation and then the requirements for the identification of a poverty threshold.
• ‘The concept and measurement of poverty’ by David Gordon (Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain, Pantazis et al., 2006). Gordon uses the improved data collected on income and resources in the Poverty and Social Exclusion survey to develop new ways to compare income in different households (the PSE, budget standards based, equivalence scale). He explores the measurement of an ‘objective’ poverty threshold that identifies a level of income that would cause a household to suffer multiple deprivations if it was dependent on this income for an appreciable length of time.
• ‘The concept and measurement of social exclusion’ by  Ruth Levitas (Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain, Pantazis et al., 2006). Levitas extends the indicators of the extent of social relations and an ability to participate in society that had been covered in the Breadline Britain surveys. She investigates far more fully and systematically the measures of social exclusion that cover social relations, the labour market and service exclusion. Her chapter discusses the development of definitions and indicators of social exclusion in the UK and the European Union.
• ‘Bare necessities: poverty and social exclusion in Northern Ireland’ by Paddy Hillyard et al. (2003). In Chapters 2 and 3 of this report, the authors outline the development of the consensual approach, how it relates to other approaches to measuring poverty, and how they implemented the approach in this study.

Impact

Using the concept of necessities as ‘consensual’ deprivation indicators has been influential in both academic research and in setting government targets. In the UK, the Department of Work and Pensions has funded various studies that draw on the PSE studies to develop indicators of deprivation for inclusion in the Family Resources Survey (see Developing Deprivation Questions for the Family Resources Survey, Working Paper Number 13 and Measuring Material Deprivation among Older People: Methodological Study to Revise the Family Resources Survey Questions, Working Paper Number 54).

Various deprivation indicators have also been incorporated into:

• new official UK measurement of child poverty
• the Families and Children Survey (FACS)
• EU measurements, especially in the EU(SILC)
• UN definitions and measurement of poverty (Rio Group, 2006).

Anti-poverty strategy in Ireland has also made use of information on necessities to measure progress.

This ‘consensual’ approach is now widely used in poverty research internationally. Poverty and Social Exclusion style surveys have been undertaken in:

Germany, France, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, the EU and, worldwide, in Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Tanzania, Yemen and Bangladesh.

See Other research for further details of these studies.

Critiques and adaptations

There have been a number of critiques of the consensual method.

‘Adapting the consensual definition of poverty’ by Bjørn Halleröd, Jonathan Bradshaw and Hilary Holmes (from Breadline Britain in the 1990s, Gordon and Pantazis, 1997) questions the decision to use a simple majority (over 50 per cent) as the basis for deciding which items are necessities. The authors examine the limitations of this majority approach; in particular, in relation to any lack of homogeneity of views among different groups in the population at large and in relation to any individual’s view of necessities and their consumption patterns. They proposed using a proportional deprivation index rather than the majority necessities index used by the the Breadline Britain and PSE studies. See also: A New Approach to the Direct Consensual Measurement of Poverty (Halleröd, 1994).

Other critiques emphasise a concern that any method that identifies ‘the truly poor’ ends up reducing all their field of study to the consequences of a low level of current income and minimises the impact on deprivation of other sources of welfare, in particular publicly provided welfare. See for example: A Typology of Poverty Measurement Methods by Julio Boltvinik.

The fundamental idea behind the consensual method – that what constitutes a minimum acceptable way of life should be established by reference to the views of members of that society – has been developed in a different direction by the ‘Consensual Budget Standard’ approach – see Minimum Income Standards in Other approaches.

References

Boltvinik, J. (undated) A Typology of Poverty Measurement Methods, Mexico.
Gordon, D. (2006) ‘The concept and measurement of poverty’ in Pantazis, C., Gordon, D. and Levitas, R. Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain, Bristol, The Policy Press.
Gordon, D. and Pantazis, C. (1997) ‘Measuring poverty’ in Gordon, D. and Pantazis, C. Breadline Britain in the 1990s, Aldershot, Ashgate.
Halleröd, B. (1994) A New Approach to the Direct Consensual Measurement of Poverty, New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre.
Halleröd, B., Bradshaw, J. and Holmes, H. (1997) ‘Adapting the consensual definition of poverty’ in Gordon, D. and Pantazis, C. Breadline Britain in the 1990s, Aldershot, Ashgate.
Hillyard P., Kelly, G., McLaughlin, E., Patsios, D. and Tomlinson, M. (2003) Bare Necessities: Poverty and Social Exclusion in Northern Ireland, Belfast, Democratic Dialogue.
Levitas, R. (2006) ‘The concept and measurement of social exclusion’ in Pantazis, C., Gordon, D. and Levitas, R. Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain, Bristol, Policy Press.
Mack, J. (1985) ‘How poor is too poor? Defining poverty’ in Mack, J. and Lansley, S. Poor Britain, London, George Allen & Unwin.
McKay, S. and Collard, S. (2003) Developing Deprivation Questions for the Family Resources, Working Paper Number 13, London, Department of Work and Pensions.
McKay, S. (2008) Measuring Material Deprivation among Older People: Methodological Study to Revise the Family Resources Survey Questions, Working Paper Number 54, London, Department of Work and Pensions.

PSE 2011 is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.