The meaning of poverty

Abstract

r HE BELIEF that poverty has been virtually eliminated in Britain is commonly held. It has been reiterated in parliament . and the press and has gained authority from a stream of books and papers published by economists, sociolc)gists and others in the postwar years.l In the main the proposition rests on three generalizations which are accepted as facts. The first is that full employment, combined with larger real wages and the enormous increase in the numbers of married women in paid employment, has brought prosperity to the mass of the population. The second is that there has been a marked redistribution of income from rich to poor and, indeed, a continuing equalization of income and wealth. And the third is that the introduction of a welfare state has created a net-though some prefer to use the metaphor a feather bed-which prevents nearly all those who are sick, disabled, old or unemployed from falling below a civilized standard of subsistence. Each of these generalizations needs to be examined carefully. We might, for example, ask whether a population of the present size, with 400,000 registered unemployed, constitutes a society with 'full employment'; or whether to the oicial numbers of the unemployed, we should add many thousands of married women, handicapped persons and persons of pensiollable age who do not register with employment exchanges, but who would take certain forms of paid work, particularly light or sheltered work, if it was available. Again, we might ask whether postwar Britain justifies the epithet of a 'welfare' state in relation either to contemporary needs and resources or to the social services which existed during and before the war. But perhaps the crucial concepts embedded in these three generalizations which should give us pause are those of 'prosperity', 'equality' and 'subsistence'. I cannot attempt to deal comprehensively with these elusive concepts. I shall merely try to say something about the meaning of 'subsistence', which appears to govern much contemporary thought about the subject of poverty. My main thesis is that both 'poverty' and 'subsistence' are relative concepts and that they can only be deSned in relation to the material and emotional resources available at a particular time to the members either of a particular society or different societies.