Complexity, Poverty and Social Exclusion

Dr David GordonProfessor of Social JusticeSchool for Policy Studies

University of Bristol

Complexity & the Real World WorkshopMerchant Venturers Building, Rm 1.11

University of Bristol22nd June 2010

Web Site: http://www.bris.ac.uk/poverty/

Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom: The 2011 Survey

The largest ever research project on Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom started on 1st April 2010. The ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) has funded this 42 month, £4.3 million pound investigation designed to advance the ‘state of the art’ of poverty and social exclusion measurement.

The research team is one of the most experienced in poverty measurement methodology ever assembled in the UK. It is a major collaboration between researchers at Heriot-Watt University, the National Centre for Social Research, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Bristol, University of Glasgow and the University of York.

BackgroundEvery decade since the late 1960s, UK social scientists have attempted to carry out an independent poverty survey to test out new ideas and incorporate current state of the art methods into UK poverty research.

•1968-69 Poverty in the UK survey (Peter Townsend and colleagues),

•1983 Poor Britain survey (Joanna Mack, Stewart Lansley)

•1990 Breadline Britain survey (Joanna Mack, Stewart Lansley)

•1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey (Jonathan Bradshaw and colleagues) and its 2002 counterpart in Northern Ireland (Paddy Hillyard and colleagues)

•2011 Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK - www.poverty.ac.uk

Objectives1.To improve the measurement of poverty,

deprivation, social exclusion and standard of living.

2.To measure the change in the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion over the past ten years.

3.To produce policy-relevant results about the causes and outcomes of poverty and social exclusion.

The Terrible Costs of Poverty in Developing Countries

Age at death by age group, 1990-1995

Source: The State of the World Population 1998

Make Poverty History: Click Video

Death Toll of 20th Century Atrocitieshttp://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm

Death toll of young children from poverty, 1990 to 1995

Cause of death for children under five

Bars show estimated confidence interval

Only the good die young? – what kills children

The Costs of Poverty in the UK

Child poverty costs the UK at least £25 billion a year, (equivalent to 2% of GDP) including £17 billion that could accrue to the Exchequer if child poverty were eradicated.

Public spending to deal with the fallout of child poverty is about £12 billion a year, about 60 per cent of which goes on personal social services, school education and police and criminal justice.

- The annual cost of below-average employment rates and earnings levels among adults who grew up in poverty is about £13 billion, of which £5 billion represents extra benefit payments and lower tax revenues; the remaining £8 billion is lost earnings to individuals, affecting gross domestic product (GDP).

Economic Cost of Child Poverty in the UK

Child Poverty in the UKThe UK Government is committed to tackling the problem of child poverty. In March 1999, the Prime Minister Tony Blair set out a commitment to end child poverty forever:

“And I will set out our historic aim that ours is the first generation to end child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a 20-year mission but I believe it can be done.

The Child Poverty Act 2010 has placed this policy commitment into UK law

Child Poverty Act 2010

Places in legislation the commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, this means that UK Secretary of State will have a duty to meet the following child poverty targets:

•Relative poverty: Less than 10% of children living in relative low income poverty by 2020. •Material Deprivation: Less than 5% of children living in combined material deprivation and low income. •Absolute low income: Reduce the proportion of children who live in absolute low income to less than 5%.•Persistent Poverty: percentage of children living in relative poverty for three out of four years (target level to be set by the end of 2014 as data are currently unavailable)

Requires the UK Secretary of State to publish a UK child poverty strategy, which must be revised every three years.

Definition and Measurement

Scientific Definitions of Poverty

Poverty can be defined as;

Command over insufficient resources over time

The result of poverty is deprivation

“poverty is a dynamic, not a static concept…Our general theory, then, should be that individuals and families whose resources over time fall seriously short of the resources commanded by the average individual or family in the community in which they live . . . are in poverty.”

Townsend (1962, p 219)

Peter Townsend’s concept of dynamic poverty

Uni-dimensional Poverty Measurement - Low Income in Britain 1961-2003

where:Pα is the level of povertyn is the population sizeQ is the number of poorz is the poverty lineyi is the per capita household incomeand α has a normative value that can be set at different levels according to the importance one attaches to the lowest living standards.

)zyz-

( n1 = P i

q

1=i

Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) index

Modal Deprivation by Logarithm of Income as a Percentageof Supplementary Benefit Scale Rates (Townsend, 1979)

Definition of poverty

IncomeLow Income High

Income

Standard of Living

High

Low

Optimal Position ofthe Poverty Threshold

Poverty ThresholdSet Too High

Poverty ThresholdSet Too Low

Not Poor

Poor

Time

High

Low

Income andStandard of Living

Poverty Threshold

Income

Standard of Living

0 1 2 3 4 5

Not Poor

Poor

Not Poor

Sinkingintopoverty

Climbingout ofpoverty

Dynamics of poverty

If we let R(t) and L(t) represent the number of rabbits and Canadian Lynx, respectively, that are alive at time t, then the Lotka-Volterra model is:

dR/dt = a*R - b*R*LdL/dt = e*b*R*L - c*L

where the parameters are defined by: a is the natural growth rate of Rabbits in the absence of predation, c is the natural death rate of Lynx in the absence of food (Rabbits), b is the death rate per encounter of Rabbits due to predation, e is the efficiency of turning predated Rabbits into Lynx.

This is a simple first order non-linear differential model – when extended to multiple species it exhibits chaotic dynamic behaviour

Lotka-Volterra (Predator-Prey) Model

Key ref: May, R. (1974) Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems, Princeton U. Press, NJ.

Poverty Groups

(%)Can t afford to 47

Not interested 44

Lack of time due to childcare responsibilities 18

Too old, ill, sick or disabled 14

Lack of time due to paid work 14

No one to go out with (social) 6

No vehicle poor public transport 5

Lack of time due to other caring responsibilities 4

Fear of burglary or vandalism 3

Fear of personal attack 3

Can t go out due to other caring responsibilities 2

Problems with physical access 1

Feel unwelcome (e.g. due to disability ethnicity, gender, age, etc)

1

None of these 8

Reasons why people do not participate in socially necessary activities

Source: PSE 1999, Multiple responses allowed

The Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix (B-SEM)