The Poverty Line

vivatifosi

Blue22 wrote: »

I also think it's misleading to use the emotive term 'absolute poverty' but it's not the journalists at fault, it is the term used in the Child Poverty Act.

Thanks for the clarification Blue22. That really annoys me. The term 'absolute poverty' is supposed to be an international one to allow comparisons between countries. Traditionally it has meant subsistence living in poor countries on something like a couple of dollars per day. However, in 1995 the UN defined absolute poverty as
"a condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs", listing those as a lack of food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and access to benefits.

Tinkering with its meaning so it's relevant only to the UK shouldn't be acceptable, particularly as there is a chasm between the new meaning and the conventional one. There are relatively few people in the UK and certainly not millions that face such deprivations.

Is it the IFS's fault though for writing the report, or NuLab, who doubtless drafted the bill?

michaels

This website explains the rationale for some of the definitions and also states that generally the phrase 'living in low-income households' is a preferable expression as it does not have the emotive/value judgement poverty term:
http://www.poverty.org.uk/summary/income%20intro.shtml#nlink1

Quote from another page in the same site:

In recent years, the Government has begun to describe households with less than half 1 the average 1997 household income (after adjusting for inflation) as being in 'absolute poverty'. This is, however, purely a political device - the only relevance of 1997 is that it is when the current [at time of writing] Government came into power. 2 That is not to say that the statistic is unimportant, simply that it should not be described as 'absolute poverty'.