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Making the
public case for tackling poverty and inequality
New research
has found that many people are unaware, misinformed or sceptical
of the reality of poverty in the UK, and of the Government's pledge
eradicate child poverty by 2020. Here, Louise Bamfield argues
that the Government needs to engage greater public support for this
goal, as much more investment is needed to achieve it. Investing
in quality of life and improving life chances must be argued as
both morally right and, in the bigger picture, beneficial to society
as a whole.
Introduction
The
low visibility of poverty in the UK
The
media and negative stereotypes
Mobilising
public support
Promoting
a political agenda for more equal life chances
References
Introduction
The Government has made good progress in tackling child poverty
in its first two terms in office, successfully reducing the number
of families living below the poverty line by 15 per cent (which
represents over half a million children) between 1998 and 2003.
Although the most recent figures from the Households Below Average
Income study show a disappointing slow-down in this rate of
progress, the achievements of the Government’s anti-poverty strategy
thus far remain impressive.
The Government
will face considerable difficulties, however, in sustaining progress
in its third term. In part this is due to the sheer scale of poverty
and inequality that remains, which is too great for existing public
policies alone to surmount. Political decision makers will need
to devise new policy instruments to break the vicious cycle whereby
poverty in childhood is the forerunner of poor health and education
and other key outcomes in adulthood. The task will become more difficult
in the future, not least because people suffering from multiple
and severe disadvantage will be particularly hard to reach.
However, there
is another group which will prove just as hard to reach – the broader
public. Public opinion is crucial because it is impossible to see
how the Government can sustain political momentum for its antipoverty
strategy unless it mobilises popular support for a more radically
progressive – and by implication, more costly – policy programme.
It is significant
in this regard that the Government’s successes so far have been
achieved through a package of largely hidden or under-publicised
measures – a covert operation that has been labelled ‘redistribution
by stealth’. There is now growing recognition that the long-term
targets can only be met through an open and upfront approach to
tackling poverty and inequality in Britain.
The need to
mobilise public support has prompted calls for the Government to
go public with its vision of a society in which poverty has been
removed – though it is noticeable that those calls were not generally
heeded in the general election campaign of 2005. Standing on a platform
of economic competence, the issue of tackling poverty and disadvantage
was almost entirely absent from the Labour Party’s public political
campaign.
If
the Government appears unduly cautious, its hesitance is presumably
attributable to doubts about voters’ appetite for more open redistribution.
Certainly, attitudinal surveys provide some grounds for scepticism
about the depth of public support for higher spending: surveys show
that while a significant number of people are prepared to accept
the principle of reducing income inequality in theory,[Footnote
1] they are less inclined to part with the cash in reality.[Footnote
2] Politicians can be forgiven for assuming that professed
support for a more progressive system is superficial, therefore,
and will tend to evaporate once the implications for voters’ personal
finances are made clear.
There are, then,
obvious political reasons why the Government has been reluctant
to portray itself avowedly as the party of the ‘poor’ and disadvantaged,
since to do so risks alienating the middle-income, middle-class
voters who now form the backbone of its electoral constituency.
Nevertheless,
it can still be seen to deserve criticism for failing to seize the
initiative and show firm political leadership in tackling poverty
by forging wider public consensus for a more visionary approach.
In Ruth Lister’s words, the Government has tended to ‘woo rather
than lead’ public opinion in this area, sometimes using language
that seems to reinforce existing negative stereotypes of ‘poor’
people rather than challenging them.[Footnote
3] If the Government is serious about meeting its child
poverty targets, it will need to know more about the values and
beliefs that underpin public attitudes towards poverty, as well
as exploring the persuasiveness of the case for tackling poverty
among the ‘non-poor’ public.
The
analysis below examines some of the problems that arise in making
the public case for eradicating poverty. It draws on findings of
original qualitative research conducted by MORI on behalf of the
Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty, which was designed
to explore the current views and beliefs about poverty of middle-class
and middle-income groups (people in the political centre ground,
drawn from social classes B, C1 and C2), and also to investigate
what types of political arguments are likely to be most effective
in persuading people of the need for government action.[Footnote
4]
The
low visibility of poverty in the UK
A significant gap exists between people’s perception of the problem
and the actual prevalence of poverty. By European standards the
UK public is uniquely misinformed about the extent of poverty in
the UK. Evidence from the Eurobarometer surveys, conducted simultaneously
in countries across Europe, shows that the UK stands out as having
far lower levels of visibility of poverty – as measured by the visibility
of poverty in people’s neighbourhood or local area – than the actual
(high) incidence of poverty would suggest. In 2001, visibility of
poverty among UK citizens was lower than in many countries including
the Netherlands, Belgium and France, all of which have significantly
lower rates of poverty than the UK; while in 1989, the visibility
of poverty was lower in the UK than in any other country in Europe.
Comparative
evidence also shows that members of the British public are much
more likely than their European counterparts to believe that poverty
is caused by behavioural factors – a finding which helps explain
the strength of negative stereotypes of the poor in this country.
A great many people still need to be convinced both of the existence
of a problem and that the Government can effectively address it.
In accordance
with these findings, the Fabian Commission/MORI research found that
many people are sceptical about the existence of real poverty in
Britain today, and find it hard to believe that poverty exists in
the midst of our affluent society. There was active resistance to
the phenomenon of ‘income poverty’, as participants struggled to
agree on what child poverty could really mean in an apparently affluent
country such as the UK. This scepticism about poverty in contemporary
Britain owes much to its association with the condition of starving
children in Africa. Poverty ‘at home’ in the UK, by contrast, was
more strongly associated with forms of emotional neglect
than with material hardship and deprivation. There was also widespread
ignorance of the existence of in-work poverty and of the
difficulties in making ends meet even when people are working.
The
media and negative stereotypes
Misperceptions of the behaviour of ‘poor’ people are commonplace,
the product perhaps of news media that constantly deny the reality
of poverty and of a popular culture that typically portrays people
on low incomes as grotesque caricatures. As a CPAG book, Poverty
first hand: Poor people speak for themselves, details, numerous
instances can be found of negative stereotyping of ‘poor’ people
in the press, where they are portrayed as lacking initiative and
budgeting skills, as fraudulent ‘professional’ beggars, as single
mothers who contrive to become pregnant only to ‘jump the housing
list’, and as members of an ‘underclass’ characterised by ‘drugs,
casual violence, petty crime, illegitimate children, homelessness,
work avoidance and contempt for conventional values’.[Footnote
5]
The Fabian Commission/MORI
research found that people’s attitudes towards poverty are often
distorted by the picture of the world they see portrayed on TV.
In expressing their doubts about the existence of ‘real’ poverty,
participants made frequent reference to so-called ‘reality’ TV shows
such as Wife Swap to back up their claims that unemployed
people are able to enjoy a comfortable, even luxurious, lifestyle
on benefits at the expense of the taxpayer. Another prevalent view
was that ‘hard up’ parents are feckless and irresponsible, wasting
their money on drinking and gambling – on ‘dog-racing and scratch
cards’. Above all, the deliberative workshop revealed a fundamental
lack of empathy with people living in poverty, alongside a lack
of positive cultural referents of people who are doing all they
can for their families yet still struggling to make ends meet.
The research
also revealed that people generally have very little understanding
of the ways in which material hardship impacts on the lives of children
and parents, and its ramifications for their psychological and physical
health and well-being. Thus, alongside widespread scepti-cism about
the existence of income poverty, participants were strongly inclined
to blame child poverty on deficiencies in parent’s personal behaviour
and viewed ‘poor’ parents as selfish, wasteful and neglectful, to
the detriment of their children’s life chances.
The tendency
to blame poverty on deficiencies in personal behaviour is not wholly
surprising, given the prevalence of negative stereotypes in the
media. But the size of the gap between popular perceptions and the
reality of life in poverty is nevertheless profoundly depressing
– and difficult territory from which to start to put together a
compelling public case for tackling poverty. It is therefore important
that the Fabian Commission/MORI research not only investigated people’s
existing attitudes and beliefs about poverty, but examined how they
responded to evidence of the reality of life in poverty. Using a
deliberative format, it explored the kinds of information and arguments
that could be persuasive in changing people’s minds about the existence
and seriousness of the problem.
Mobilising
public support
As we might expect, technical definitions of relative income poverty
tended to confuse rather than clarify the issue. A poverty line
of 60 per cent of median income was seen as setting an arbitrary
figure and ultimately failed to convey any sense of what it means
for people to live below that line or whether income above the poverty
line offers an adequate standard of living.
Although not
unexpected, resistance to a definition of relative income poverty
was significant as it tended to affect people’s reaction to statistical
evidence of the Government’s progress in tackling poverty. Where
people remained unconvinced by the measure of poverty being used,
they were not persuaded by statistical data (presented in a variety
of graphical forms) showing the reduction over time in the number
of children living below the poverty line. Until people’s doubts
are assuaged about the existence of poverty, in other words, they
are unlikely to believe claims that poverty has decreased or increased
over time.
Of course, there
is wide recognition that differences pertain between what economists
mean by poverty and how the rest of us understand the term – which
has prompted social scientists to develop an alternative set of
measures. Deploying evidence of the real daily outcome of chronic
and persistent poverty, based on measures of hardship and deprivation,
proved to be more compelling and more powerful in convincing initially
sceptical people of the reality of poverty than apparently arbitrary,
technical definitions. Measures of hardship appear to be more powerful
because they provide something that people can relate to, even those
who have no direct experience of poverty themselves.
The
value of surveys, like Breadline Britain, which use public
opinion as a benchmark for what every family needs, is that they
allow for the development of publicly credible measures of poverty.
A case is sometimes made, however, for restricting the list of items
included in a definition of hardship to the most basic essentials,
since a wider set of measures (items such as the affordability of
leisure equipment and activities – having a bicycle or going swimming
once a month) do not have the same ‘moral force’ as children going
without basic necessities such as food and clothes.[Footnote
6] Contrary to this view, an interesting aspect of our
findings was that a wider list does have public credibility:
specific items had a different emotional impact for different participants.
For some in the deliberative workshop it was precisely the evidence
of exclusion from wider social participation like swimming that
had greatest impact.
However, although
it was possible to elicit a strong emotional reaction to evidence
of the hardship suffered by children in poverty, we saw little sign
of people shifting their views of the underlying causes of poverty.
It seems that people who themselves have no direct experience of
poverty can be moved to feel sympathy and concern for the situation
of children in poverty, but still tend to blame parents for their
plight.
There is, then,
a particular need to promote a wider understanding of the reality
of life in poverty and to combat the stereotypes of the poor that
sap public support. It is also important to demonstrate how good
parenting alone is often not enough to overcome the hurdles poverty
places in the path of children. As Michael Rutter famously expressed
it:
Good
parenting requires certain permitting circumstances. There must
be the necessary life opportunities and facilities. Where these
are lacking even the best parents may find it difficult to exercise
their skills.[Footnote 7]
Participants
were also asked about their attitudes towards focusing public services
on the disadvantaged. The general view here was that they would
not accept any worsening of their own services as the price of improving
services for others. What they would accept was slower improvement
in their own services if this enabled faster progress for the disadvantaged.
In other words, our participants were prepared to see public services
used to level up inequalities – but were not prepared to
see a deterioration of their own services as a result of levelling
down.
Promoting
a political agenda for more equal life chances
What lessons can be learned from the research about making a public
case for tackling poverty? First, mobilising support for the Government’s
antipoverty strategy obviously means persuading a generally sceptical
public of the existence of a problem. People are unlikely to be
impressed by claims that the Government has been successful in tackling
poverty if they are yet to be convinced of the reality of poverty
in this country. Second, it is clearly essential to combat myths
and misperceptions about people in the lowest income groups by portraying
the reality of life in poverty. Stereotypes need to be tackled head-on,
with particular attention paid to the way that ‘poor’ people are
portrayed in the media. It also follows that the research has implications
for the kind of language politicians themselves employ. A fine line
must be tread between respecting people’s understandable sense of
fairness and reciprocity, on the one hand, and pandering to stereotypes,
on the other – especially given what we have seen about the prevalence
of those stereotypes.
Finally, mobilising
support for an antipoverty agenda means building a political coalition
behind the issue. It is important to recognise here the limits to
the appeal of a campaign based solely around the issue of poverty.
To build and sustain support for policies that address poverty,
the concept of ‘poverty’ must be aligned to a wider set of social
justice issues, as part of a deliberate strategy of building a wider
base of support. Leading figures within Government have grasped
the need for a broad coalition, though they have tended to attempt
the task by marrying the concept with that of social mobility. Helping
the poorest in society may well be too narrow a platform upon which
to build a viable coalition, but relying on the concept of social
mobility is problematic; its individualistic connotations are at
a disjuncture with the issue of poverty.
Instead of espousing
the value of social mobility, it will be more helpful, we argue,
to forge a political coalition around the framework of ‘life chances’.
A public case needs to be made for investment in policies to help
improve the life chances of all children and to narrow the gap in
life chances between children from the most affluent and most deprived
backgrounds. As we have seen, people are prepared to see greater
investment in the services of the poorest members of the community,
providing that their own services continue to improve, albeit at
a slower rate. Antipoverty campaigners need to give people reasons
to support investment to promote more equal life chances which appeal
both to moral arguments and to a sense of enlightened self-interest.
Crucially, the life chances framework has the potential to do both,
since it is a striking feature of modern Britain that inequalities
in life chances exist across the social gradient, providing a unifying
discourse for people in lower and middle income groups alike.
Louise
Bamfield is Research Fellow and Secretary to the Fabian Commission
on Life Chances and Child Poverty
References
1.
For example, a consistently high proportion of the British electorate
say the gap between high and low incomes is too large. In the British
Social Attitudes Survey, the proportion of respondents who say
this gap is too large rose from 72 per cent in 1983 to a peak of
85 per cent in 1994, while it now lies at 82 per cent. In addition,
support for the idea that taxes and spending on welfare should be
higher more than doubled from 32 per cent in 1983 to 65 per cent
in 1991, and has remained strong ever since. [back
to text]
2. Making explicit the consequences of general
principles or statements of support for the level of taxation that
people pay sharply reduces people’s willingness to support increases
in public spending. Prior to being told about the consequence of
their choices for taxation, respondents in the British Social
Attitudes Survey either underestimated the true tax cost to
them of their spending choices, or assumed that the tax consequences
of extra spending would fall on someone else. [Back
to text]
3. R Lister, ‘New Labour: a study in ambiguity
from a position of ambivalence’, Critical Social Policy,
21(4), 2001, pp. 425-47 [back to text]
4.
The deliberative research consisted of two group discussions, a
three-hour extended focus group (9 participants) and a full day
(six-hour) workshop (21 participants). All were recruited by telephone
with a pre-agreed set of demographic parameters. In both sessions,
a representative sample was recruited on the basis of gender, BME
status, and age/life-stage within the range 25–45 years (focus group)
and 25–65 years (workshop). All participants were drawn from socio-economic
classes B, C1 and C2. Their professional sectors included teaching,
insurance, social work, banking, and leisure. For practical reasons,
all were recruited from London and the South East of England.
[Back to text]
5.
P Beresford, D Green, R Lister and K Woodard, Poverty first hand:
Poor people speak for themselves, CPAG, 1999 [back
to text]
6. A Marsh, ‘Ending child poverty: Inaugural
lecture by Alan Marsh’, University of Westminster, 10 March 2004,
www.psi.org.uk/docs/2004/alanmarsh.pdf
[back to text]
7. M Rutter, ‘Dimensions of parenthood: some
myths and some suggestions’, in Department of Health and Social
Security, The Family in Society: Dimensions of Parenthood,
HMSO, 1974 [back to text]
Poverty
121, Summer 2005
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