OUT NOW - the two-volume study based on the findings of the Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK research. Volume 1 examines the extent of poverty and volume 2 the different dimensions of disadvantage. Published by Policy Press on November 29, 2017.
Comparing people’s actual living standards with the minimum standards which the public thinks everyone should have, there are in Scotland:
• almost one million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions
• 800,000 people are too poor to engage in common social activities
• over a quarter of a million children and adults aren’t properly fed.
It has long been recognised that extreme inequality has many serious social consequences, as well as causing economic fragility and weakness - now the time has surely come to act.
The percentage of households falling below society's minimum standard of living has increased from 14% to 33% over the last 30 years, despite the size of the economy doubling. In Scotland today, when we compare people's actual living standards with the minimum standards which the public thinks everyone should have, we find that:
The results of the largest ever study into poverty and social exclusion show rising levels of deprivation and that parents sacrifice their own welfare to protect their children. Read the full press release for the 2014 Townsend Memorial conference held in London on June 19 and 20, 2014.
The latest edition of Poverty in Scotland, 2014, sets out to inform the independence debate in Scotland, providing the latest facts and figures and looking at how other regions and nations have tackled the problem. Gerry Mooney gives an overview.
Plans by the coalition government to change how child poverty is officially measured have had to be shelved due to deadlock in a row between the Treasury and the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper.
Duncan Smith outlined the plans in a consultation document in November 2012. The document said that although income mattered, a new multi-dimensional approach was needed to tackle the problem of child poverty. It suggested criteria for measuring child poverty that included: living in a workless household; living in a family with problem debt; living in poor housing or a troubled area; living in an unstable family environment; attending a failing school; having parents without the skills they need to get on; or having parents who are in poor health. The coalition government subsequently produced polling evidence that it said showed popular support for the measures.
There is a need to recognise the role of social isolation in people’s experience of poverty, and to find ways of constructing a basic internationally comparable indicator for it, according to a new working paper by researchers at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.
The paper presents a working definition of social isolation; emphasises the relevance of isolation in poverty analysis; and proposes indicators to measure social connectedness that could be incorporated into a multi-topic household survey.