Poverty, local services and austerity

While public support for local services as ‘essential’ remains high, there have been divergent trends in usage, with increases in public transport, corner shops and childrens services, but declines in information,leisure and cultural services. Distribution of service usage has become slightly more ‘pro-poor’, yet poorer groups are still more likely to report constraints in service access or quality. Services are not systematically worse in poorer neighbourhoods, in most cases, and service exclusion does not overlap much with other dimensions of social exclusion. While the service domain thus appears to continue to bolster equality, post-austerity cuts to local government spending threaten significant retrenchment in poorer localities.

Severe poverty and destitution

There have been growing concerns about various manifestations of extreme hardship in the UK, which are investigated using both PSE and a survey of emergency service users. A consensus-based definition of destitution is developed and applied to show its current extent and incidence in Britain. While no single cause dominates, the importance of arrears and debts, benefit levels, delays and sanction, health and relationship problems, evictions, job loss and migration are all underlined.

The multidimensional analysis of social exclusion

The Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix (BSEM) identifies multiple domains of social exclusion, and the PSE-UK 2012 survey successfully operationalised these for the first time in a single UK household survey. There are many approaches which can be used to explore the relationships between the multiple domains. This chapter uses two different approaches to see how consistent the picture is between them. There is considerable overlap or correlation between some of the domains, suggesting that the original ten can be reduced to a smaller number of broader groups. Material resources and hence poverty not only form one of the main dimensions of exclusion, but also correlate with many other aspects of exclusion. In other words, poverty and deprivation are at the core of the concept of exclusion. Nevertheless, there are aspects of exclusion which are much less connected to material disadvantage, if at all. The concept – and its operationalisation in the PSE-UK survey – therefore succeeds in drawing attention to a wider set of processes producing disadvantage.

The poverty of well-being

This chapter challenges the popular focus on well-being or happiness as the new over-arching policy goal of public and private sectors. It argues instead for a traditional social policy focus on income distribution and social justice as the means to achieve the greatest improvements in well-being. Using a variety of measures, data from the PSE-UK 2012 survey are analysed to demonstrate the material basis of well-being and low life satisfaction. The results show that average well-being scores for those living in poverty are well below the scores for the non-poor. Living with a limiting illness or disability was also found to have a substantial negative effect on well-being. Overall satisfaction with life falls more sharply as household incomes fall, indicating that there are particular gains to be had from focusing on the material needs of the most disadvantaged. Income redistribution is not therefore a zero-sum game. Rather, the results show that the lives of the poor and the long-term sick and disabled would be measurably improved by lifting them out of poverty and improving their material conditions. All in all, the results challenge the idea that well-being is ‘all in the mind’ and detached from material resources.

Financial inclusion, financial stress and debt

Exclusion from financial services in the form of bank accounts has fallen and appears less significant than informal borrowing and problem debt, which have increased dramatically and are strongly associated with poverty. The most common arrears problems are with housing, local taxes and utility bills, not consumer credit. About a fifth of households are not poor but exhibit similar signs of financial stress. Family remains more important than ‘payday lenders’ as a source of informal lendng,underlining the importance of social capital

Poverty, social exclusion and civic engagement

Although political equality is a basic democratic principle, citizen participation in political and civic life remains highly unequal. This chapter sheds new light on social inequalities in political participation by examining the relationship between poverty and participation in political and civic life in the UK today. Whether using subjective measures, low income, deprivation, or the combined PSE approach, this chapter shows that poverty is associated with lower levels of participation in politics and lower levels of associational activity amongst UK adults. Civic and political participation is known to be strongly associated with positive perceptions of political efficacy. This chapter confirms these findings. Moreover, it shows that people experiencing poverty are also somewhat less positive about their ability to influence local decisions and political issues than better-off respondents. Taken together these findings point to the continued exclusion of people experiencing poverty from full participation in political and civic life. Beyond voting, political participation is an uncommon experience for many in the UK. Reducing inequalities in participation (including socio-economic inequalities that underpin them) should be prioritised in ensuring that rights to an equal say in political decisions are realised in practice.

Conclusions and emerging themes

Poverty as measured by material deprivation through lack of economic resources remains absolutely central to understanding the causation and patterning of most aspects of social exclusion and a wide range of social outcomes. Concerns are expressed about the implications of trends to greater inequality, marketization and loss of social cohesion, as well as stagnating living standards and increased precarity in the workplace and housing market. While the multi-dimensional perspective combining poverty and social exclusion is shown to be of value the emerging behavioural agenda around poverty requires critical challenge.

Poverty and social harm: challenging discourses of risk, resilience and choice

This chapter explores the injurious nature of poverty as a condition and a generative context which determines the experience of related injury. Drawing on the social harm approach we seek to contextualise these injuries and to provide a counterpoint to dominant narratives of risk, resilience and choice that serve to individualise the harms of poverty. Using both quantitative and qualitative data from the PSE-UK study, four key findings emerge. First, poverty increases the risk of injuries in the home and at work, as well as the likelihood of being the victim of violence. Second, powerlessness is a key injury of poverty; the loss of control over key aspects of individuals’ lives is anxiety provoking – the PSE poor were three times more likely to report suffering from a mental illness than the non-poor. Third, the injuries of stigma and disrespect are daily features of life on a low income – the PSE poor were nearly eight and six times more likely to report instances of misrecognition due to class and disability. Finally poverty injuriously impacts relationships and the ability to participate socially; under financial constraint, PSE survey participants are more likely to relinquish friendships

Poverty and health: thirty years of progress?

This chapter presents an overview of the relationships of poverty and social exclusion to health. Inequalities in health are investigated across poverty definitions and different health measures, including general health, limiting long term illness, mental state and longstanding mental conditions. Relationships of dimensions of social exclusion to health are also exposed. Health is worse for the unemployed compared to those who are working, reflecting a complex pattern of associations where health is both a cause and consequence of labour market exclusion. The housing environment demonstrates further inequalities in general and mental health, as does exclusion in the form of low social activity and support, which significantly relate to worse mental health. Overall, this chapter reveals the persistent nature of health inequality. More than 30 years on from the first Breadline Britain survey, individuals in poverty are still suffering worse health compared to their more advantaged counterparts.

Housing and the living environment

Housing affordability problems are exacerbating poverty, particularly for working age households increasingly reliant on private renting, and housing needs have increased, reversing long-standing trends. UK housing still partially insulates the poor from bad housing experience but this tendency is weakening. Fuel poverty has significantly worsened and the poor are 6-10 times more likely to experience its adverse impacts. The poor are also more likely to experience neighbourhood social and other problems.