Introduction: poverty and social exclusion in the UK

Abstract

The results of the Poverty and Social Exclusion 2012 survey (PSE-UK 2012) present a staggering picture of poverty in the UK today. There is little disagreement that in the 21st-century poverty is a serious social problem in one of wealthiest countries in the world. Over one hundred years since Rowntree wrote that ‘in this land of abounding wealth, during a time of perhaps unexampled prosperity, probably more than one fourth of the population are living in poverty, is a fact which may well cause great searchings of heart’ (1901, p 304), the problem of poverty in the UK has not been solved. As Julia Unwin, ex-chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has written ‘current levels of poverty are neither acceptable nor inevitable’ (...