The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
Income poverty
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16/09/2013
How to boost the wage share
There has been much debate on the merits of tackling inequality by prioritising ‘pre-distribution` - of attempting to achieve a more equal distribution of the cake before turning to ‘redistribution’ through tax and benefits. Stewart Lansley examines the possible impact of a number of measures on wage levels and the wage share.
Category: Articles -
29/06/2013
Labour’s record on poverty and inequality
The last Labour government made 'considerable' progress on its chosen objectives of reducing child and pensioner poverty, but had little impact on overall inequality, according to a major study of its time in office (1997–2010).
The 'Social Policy in a Cold Climate' project, being carried out at the London School of Economics, aims to chart developments on a wide range of social issues since 2007 – eventually allowing a detailed comparison between the Labour and coalition governments. A new report from the project summarises five separate studies of the Labour period, including one focusing on poverty and inequality.
Category: Reports -
19/06/2013
Tackling poverty in Scotland
The existing economic model traps too many people in Scotland in a cycle of economic hardship, argues a new report from Oxfam. Allocating resources in a more effective and sustainable way could help to tackle poverty and inequality, it says, and deliver lasting social change.
Category: Reports -
13/06/2013
Absolute poverty up nearly a million under coalition
The percentage of people living in households with an 'absolute' low income was 17 per cent (before housing costs) in 2011-12 – nearly a million higher than when the coalition government took office in 2010-11 – according to the latest official Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistical report.
The HBAI report uses three main measures of low income/inequality:
Relative low income – where someone lives in household that receives less than 60 per cent of the average (median disposable) income in the year in question.
Absolute low income – where someone lives in household that receives less than 60 per cent of average (median disposable) income in 2010-11 adjusted since then by inflation.
Income inequality – measured by the Gini coefficient, on a scale from zero (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality).Category: Reports -
04/06/2013
‘Persistent’ chronic poverty worldwide
A high proportion of the world's population who were living in poverty up to 2000 are still in poverty today, according to a study from the Brooks World Poverty Institute in Manchester. This is despite economic growth since 2000, and despite human development improvements in many low- and lower-middle-income countries.
Category: Reports -
31/05/2013
Tackling inequality and poverty in US
Reforms to the education and tax/benefit systems in the US could help to reduce income inequality and relative poverty, according to a working paper from the OECD in Paris. The paper highlights the fact that inequality and poverty in the US are among the highest for developed countries, and have also increased substantially in recent decades.
Category: Reports -
27/05/2013
Poverty and social participation – Townsend’s legacy
The legacy of ideas and evidence left by sociologist Peter Townsend (who died in 2009) remain 'profoundly relevant' in 21st century Britain, according to a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The JRF study draws on a large new dataset, Understanding Society, to explore the relationship between poverty and social participation highlighted in Townsend's work.
Category: Reports -
25/04/2013
Working-age households hit hardest by recession
Working-age households without children have seen their incomes hit harder by the recession than any other group, according to a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Young single adults have also suffered compared with others.
The study (the first in an annual series) examined changes in the adequacy of household incomes in the early part of the latest recession, and identified the risk for different groups of being below the minimum income standard (MIS) – defined as the income people need in order to reach a minimum socially acceptable standard of living in the UK today, based on what members of the public think.
Category: Reports -
22/04/2013
Multi-dimensional deprivation in Ireland
Over 29 per cent of children aged nine in Ireland suffer from multi-dimensional deprivation, according to a new analysis from University College Dublin. 20 per cent are deprived on grounds of low income. Rates of deprivation on other dimensions range from 10 per cent (delinquent behaviour) to 25.2 per cent (overweight or obese).
The researchers made use of the nine-year-old wave of the Growing Up in Ireland study to analyse multi-dimensional deprivation. Their approach involves a 'censoring' of data such that deprivations count only for those above the specified multi-dimensional threshold. This leads, they say, to a stronger set of inter-relationships between deprivation dimensions than that found under alternative approaches.
Category: Reports -
05/04/2013
Links between housing and poverty highlighted
Policy-makers need to pay closer attention to links between housing and poverty, according to a new study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that looks at how housing can mitigate or exacerbate the impact of poverty on people’s lives.
Category: Reports
