Poverty and community

Figure 1 (a) People living with less than 50% of average household income, late-2000s (%) (b) Annual average change in poverty rate between mid-1980s and late-2000s (%)

Source: Provisional data from OECD income distribution and poverty database (www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality)

Recent figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggest that poverty is increasing in many more developed societies across the world (Figure 1). The UK is just above the OECD average, but it is interesting to think about what poverty actually means in each of these societies. Here poverty is defined in relative terms, so although it seems to be growing fastest in Sweden the material circumstances of people who live there might be quite different from, say, those in Poland. In some countries it is the old who seem to suffer more than the young. You might think about some possible reasons for this.

But to know what poverty means for people, we need a rather different approach to this statistical analysis. A recent qualitative study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Low Income Neighbourhoods in Britain’ (2011), led by Professor Ian Cole at Sheffield Hallam University, found that people’s sense of place and belonging often mattered most in the poorest neighbourhoods.