Poverty Theory

A little while ago I promised to post on absolute and relative poverty, so I better do it before I forget. I was reminded by YouGov asking me a bunch of questions about it (sign up here to take part in their surveys).

In order to fulfill the left wing stereotype I studied sociology at Essex University and I remember one class on this very clearly, where the lecturer was telling us there is no absolute poverty in the UK. The implication being of course what on Earth have you lot got to complain about?

Now this was patently false and I said so. Colchester (where Essex Uni is based) has a significant level of homelessness and you can't walk down the street without someone asking you for spare change. If you've got nowhere to live - that's absolutely poverty. If you don't have enough to eat, or to keep warm in winter - that's absolute poverty. Essentially if you don't have the funds to maintain yourself - you're in absolute poverty. The national growth in GDP is irrelevant when defining the individual's circumstances.

Thankfully that's a small minority of the UK's population, but let's not turn those that are on the streets into non-persons just yet, never mind the fact that those who are visible are also an indicator of the wider poverty that lies beneath, unseen by most.

Relative poverty (which is pronounced with a silent "only" and relative in italics) is semi-officially defined as "the absence or inadequacy of those diets, amenities, standards, services and activities which are common or customary in society." Whilst I don't deny there are significant problems connected to this I do think this is where the framework begins to unravel somewhat.

We can define how well off people are by how much stuff they can afford but what this is not doing is looking at quality of life. This becomes a much clearer problem when we start to compare society today with the past.

There are a lot more playstations and dishwashers around now than there were thirty years ago. Likewise internet access is much higher now - but are these symbols of an ever more prosperous society or simply new and increasingly unhealthy ways of using our time?

These definitions of poverty do not take into account how long we work, how often we see our kids or how happy we are. They are blunt instruments at best. I'm sure 150 channels of rubbish, vibrating cock rings, and doorbells which play yankee doodle dandy all have a place in our lives (well, yours perhaps) but I don't think we should mistake them for great leaps forward.

Take car ownership, surely it's very easy to imagine a society that is moving forwards, becoming better and more pleasant to live in which has less and less cars. It's one of the reasons why I don't think we should confuse the need for society to consume less with cuts in the qulaity of the lives we lead.

So whilst capitalism undeniably produces wealth and advances in technology it simultaneously produces poverty and steps backwards for the individual. It's impossible to measure this simply through counting how many pairs of shoes we have. At the end of the day it comes down to how our lives feel and are experienced, something that's very difficult to turn into a bar chart.