Inequality

There is a strong link between poverty and inequality, and some concepts, including class and economic distance, effectively treat poverty as a form of inequality. Poverty is not inequality, and inequality is not poverty, but they are closely related, and at times it can be difficult to tell them apart. Almost every instance of poverty is also an instance of disadvantage.

Poverty and the state

A country can be taken to represent a political community. All democratic countries have come to accept some role in the reduction of poverty. This is interested differently, but almost all governments accept the principle that they are responsible to some degree for the quality of people’s lives. Governments are limited by their constitutional roles, their practical capacity and their economic powers. Policy is a disputed area; most governments proceed, not by coercion, but through negotiation, partnership and planning with a range of actors.

Poverty in national perspective

There was a time when nearly all economic and political analysis would have been done in national terms. Some commentators have been critical of ‘methodological nationalism’ – thinking that is bounded by the constraints of the nation-state. Many of the patterns of poverty considered in this book cut across nations. However, if we want to understand the nature of poverty, the reasons for it and the options to respond to it, it is hardly possible to do that without considering the poverty of nations. Countries define the scope for legitimate social action, the limits of social responsibility and the effective means of achieving social ends.

Poverty and social policy

If poverty is a matter of resources, then the way to deal with poverty is to increase people’s resources, either directly – providing money, goods and services – or indirectly, for example by promoting employment so that people can earn more resources. From a relational perspective, anti-poverty policies have to advance people’s integration into social networks, for example relationships of work, family, education and ethnicity – and reduce vulnerability, through human development and systems of social protection.

Exclusion

The discourse of exclusion has emerged as an alternative to discourses about poverty, largely because it opens debate to the examination of relational issues in ways that many social scientists have been determined to reject. Many of the themes raised by poor people are about social relationships - isolation, powerlessness, gender and the problem of government. As the policy communities dealing with poverty have come to be aware of the relational elements of poverty, they have tried to change the way they talk about poverty. The idea of exclusion is rooted in a distinct view of society, based on networks of social solidarity; the experience of exclusion is defined in terms of those networks; the primary remedy is ‘insertion’, integration or inclusion, rather than resources, equality or redistribution. These are all relational issues; the idea of exclusion is rooted in a relational understanding of people’s circumstances. And that means that discussions of exclusion come closer to the idea of poverty than much of the literature on poverty in itself, offering a way to escape from the limitations of the academic analysis of poverty. The concept of exclusion has become a major part of anti-poverty policy in international organisations, including the EU and the UN.

Poverty

Conventional representations of poverty treat it as a condition characterized by a lack of resources. In recent years, those representations have been challenged, as poverty has increasingly come to be understood as a complex, multi-dimensional set of issues. It is not a single, unified idea. A ‘relative’ concept of poverty interprets the problems of poverty as socially constructed, socially defined or associated with inequality; but the idea of relative poverty still treats poverty as state of being. ‘Structural’ concepts of poverty see poverty as the product of social relationships. A relational view of poverty begins from a different conceptual base. Much of the experience of poverty is relational: examples include problems of social exclusion, lack of security, gender relationships and lack of power. The constituent elements of poverty are relational: poverty is closely identified with specific statuses such as class, dependency and lack of entitlement. Command over resources is no less relational: the things that people can buy or use, such as access to land or finance, also depend on the position of other people. Poverty is constituted by such relationships. It is, in and of itself, a relational concept.

Rich and poor countries

The position of poor countries reflects international relationships governing economic exchange, debt, and markets. No less important are the dominance of ideas from abroad, such as the Washington Consensus, and the role of international organisations in enforcing its principles. Policies have shifted from the self-direction of the Poverty Reduction Strategies towards the top-down priorities represented by the Sustainable Development Goals.

Poverty in rich countries

The persistence of poverty in rich countries is something of a puzzle for those who see poverty in terms of resources; from a relational perspective, it is unsurprising. Although public discussion is sometimes dominated by moral judgments about the poor, governments in developed countries have come to see responses to poverty and the protection of people's circumstances as basic elements in the role of a democratic government, and if governments do not ensure that basic living standards are protected, they have failed. Debates tend to centre in practice on money, markets and commodification.

Poverty and the economy

The most obvious link between poverty and the economy is a matter of resources: in so far as poverty implies a lack of resources, it matters a lot how the resources are made, how they are distributed and what can be done about them. The links are much more extensive than that, however. The economy also shapes the way we live - our social lives, as much as our material goods. People in developing countries often lack the structures of a formal economy, including the use of money for exchange, the security and opportunity offered by monetary wages, and the existence of facilities for credit. This chapter reviews the implications for poverty of the structure of the world economy - the formal market economy, access to finance, and the framework governing transactions and exchange.

Introduction: Representations of poverty

This book is about poverty. It is distinctive in two ways: in the case it makes for a relational view of poverty, and in its attempt to draw out common themes relating to developed and developing countries.