This report looks in detail at food insecurity among benefit claimants using YouGov surveys of the...
Inequality
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01/10/2011
Low pay underpins child poverty
Work in itself is not a solution to poverty, in part because of the spread of low pay work over the last 30 years, argues Richard Dickens in the latest National Institute Economic Review (vol. 218, no. 1). In his article, ‘Child poverty in Britain: past lessons and future prospects’, Dickens examines the impact on child poverty of changes over the past decade in wages and work, tax and benefits, and demographics. He finds that benefit reform increased work among families with children but this did not translate into large falls in child poverty – those entering work depended on substantial increases in benefits to lift them over the poverty line. Changes in the wage structure and demographics increased poverty, while changes to benefits (and, to a lesser extent, taxes) over that period had reduced poverty by making the tax/benefit system more progressive and by favouring families with children over those without children.
Category: Reports -
20/05/2011
A New Understanding of Poverty
Kristian Niemietz, 2011, London, Institute of Economic Affairs
Reviewed by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack
Underlying A New Understanding of Poverty is an explicit aim to decouple measures of poverty from concepts of inequality so that the poor would no longer be seen to be, in principle, entitled to share proportionately in economic growth. Under Niemietz's proposal for a new measure, the poverty line would thereby fall slowly behind the rise in wider levels of prosperity, with profound implications for the measurement of the extent and character of poverty in the UK.
Category: Articles -
07/02/2011
Private education produces sense of superiority
Privately educated people put a greater value on the financial worth of top jobs than others, finds the latest British Attitudes Survey, 2011. The survey, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (Nat Cen) concluded that private education perpetuates a form of ‘social apartheid’ and has given rise to a political class drawn from a ‘segregated elite’ that does not understand or share the views of most people. Researchers also identified a ‘sense of superiority bonus’ that comes from attending a private school. This ‘superiority’ manifests itself in a belief that private education confers a higher position on the ladder of life.
Category: Reports -
20/01/2011
Free market think tank proposes new poverty measures
Measures of poverty should be decoupled from average earnings, argues Kristian Niemietz in a new monograph, A New Understanding of Poverty, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Niemietz argues that one perverse result of such relative poverty measures among many is that poverty often declines in a serious recession when the better paid lose their jobs. The author proposes an entirely new way of measuring poverty and argues that if this measure were applied, public policy would orientate itself towards creating the conditions that allowed the poor to become better off. The book can be purchased from the IEA.
See also:
The review of A New Understanding of Poverty by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack.Category: Reports -
18/01/2011
The ‘squeezed middle’ and the ‘poor’
by Stewart Lansley
Middle and low income households have missed out on increases in prosperity in the last three decades with the gains going to the rich. As a result the numbers vulnerable to poverty are rising.
In his first speech after becoming Labour’s new leader, Ed Miliband pledged to stand up for the ‘squeezed middle’. There is nothing especially new about Britain’s political leaders attempting to woo the central layer of British society. Mrs Thatcher won the 1979 election by targeting what she called ‘middle England’ and eighteen years later, Labour won the political battle for the centre ground with an appeal to what the popular press dubbed ‘Sierra Man’ or ‘Worcester Woman’.
Category: Articles -
14/01/2011
Inequality illusion
by Stewart Lansley
Most people think they are relatively poorer than they actually are, with the best off being more likely to think they are actually in the middle of the income hierarchy. The poor have the best estimates of their relative position.
In a study of middle income Britain conducted by YouGov for the TUC, a representative sample of the population's income range was asked: 'If everyone's income was arranged in order from lowest to highest, where do you think your income would be on this scale?' (Lansley, 2009). They were offered the choice of 'Towards the bottom', 'Below the middle', 'In the middle', 'Above the middle' or 'Towards the top'. The results are shown in Table 1. All participants have been divided into five income bands (quintiles) on the basis of their actual income. Each group represents a fifth of the population. Their actual position is then compared with their perceived position.
Category: Articles
