Social attitudes

Living in poverty is universally linked with feelings of shame, according to an Oxford University study featured in a new film.
 
 Researchers (led by Professor Robert Walker) examined attitudes to poverty in culturally different societies across the world. In the film, called Rich Man, Poor Man, people from poor and rich backgrounds in four countries (Pakistan, Uganda, UK and South Korea) talk candidly about their lives and what they think of people living in poverty.
 

The television broadcaster Channel 4 has begun showing a five-part documentary series about people living in a deprived street in Birmingham. The series – called 'Benefits Street' – was filmed in James Turner Street in the Winson Green area of Birmingham: the area has a very high rate of unemployment and the street has many residents who rely on benefits for their income.
 
Channel 4 says the series is aimed at following residents of 'Benefits Street' as they navigate their way through life on the bottom rung of Britain's economic ladder, revealing the reality of life on benefits. It says that despite the challenges the residents face during a period of austerity, with jobs remaining hard to come by and benefits being squeezed, the street also has a strong sense of community.
 

At their annual conference in September, the Royal Statistical Society organised a session on the government’s consultation on child poverty. With the next announcement on consultation now expected before Christmas, Paul Allin and John Veit-Wilson summarise the presentations and discussion.

More than one in four people who receive social security benefits have hidden the fact because they are worried about what other people will think. And more than half (51 per cent) of all those who have never been supported by benefits say they would feel embarrassed to claim.

The figures come from a YouGov online survey of 1,955 adults, undertaken on 18 and 19 September 2013.