What is the poverty line?

margaretclare

mrsyardbroom wrote: »

This means I can tell my husband we are not officially poor. He was upset because he couldn't claim any help with the cost of getting to a hospital miles away in the next county and it did cost rather a lot for him to get there.

So that was the whole reason for him saying 'we are living below the poverty line?' He wanted help with cost of travel to a hospital miles away and couldn't get it, so he thought: 'hey, we are poor, we should get hospital travel funded'?

mumps

margaretclare wrote: »

So that was the whole reason for him saying 'we are living below the poverty line?' He wanted help with cost of travel to a hospital miles away and couldn't get it, so he thought: 'hey, we are poor, we should get hospital travel funded'?

If you don't have a car it can be extremely difficult, and sometimes expensive, to get to hospital. Where I live there is one bus a day to the local hospital. If that doesn't fit with your appointment you are looking at a taxi each way at a cost of approximately £50. Some people have to travel further than that with no buses. They have cut back on hospital transport, a big fuss in the local paper, and can't get enough volunteer drivers to help everyone who needs it.

There are other buses you could use but would involve 3 buses and with connection times it could be over two hours to get there and another two hours back. Not pleasant if you aren't feeling great.

margaretclare

mumps wrote: »

If you don't have a car it can be extremely difficult, and sometimes expensive, to get to hospital. Where I live there is one bus a day to the local hospital. If that doesn't fit with your appointment you are looking at a taxi each way at a cost of approximately £50. Some people have to travel further than that with no buses. They have cut back on hospital transport, a big fuss in the local paper, and can't get enough volunteer drivers to help everyone who needs it.

There are other buses you could use but would involve 3 buses and with connection times it could be over two hours to get there and another two hours back. Not pleasant if you aren't feeling great.

Yes, I understand all that, but I just wanted to point out that that was the reason for the OP's husband saying 'we are below the poverty line'.

mumps

margaretclare wrote: »

Yes, I understand all that, but I just wanted to point out that that was the reason for the OP's husband saying 'we are below the poverty line'.

A couple of appointments a week could push alot of people below the poverty line.

anamenottaken

mrsyardbroom wrote: »

Thanks for that. I thought it was household income below 60 percent of median income rather than the average but I can't find out the median. No-one seems to have published the figures but they must be somewhere.

In my book the median is an average. The mean is what most people now call the average. (The mode is another average.)

yangptangkipperbang

Lovelyjoolz wrote: »

The poverty line in the UK is defined as a household income below 60% of the average. This threshold is currently around £195 a week for a lone parent with two children. Using this definition there are over 3 million children living in poverty.

A totally ridiculous definition ! If everyone earned £1M a year anyone on ONLY £600K would be in poverty

This silly definition is used by politicians as it will always produce a level of "poverty" that they can claim to be "passionate" about overcoming - but, of course as long as it is stated as a percentage, it will NEVER be overcome !