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.
Background
Every 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
Objectives
1.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 UK
The 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.
)z
yz-(
n
1 = 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)
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