Poverty in the UK

There are sometimes claims made by politicians that they want to eliminate child poverty* - often by labour, and it was a feature of their early years, the linked article saying it was mentioned as early as 1999.  Laudable goals, of course, but it's important to understand what people mean when they say "poverty".  Going by the dictionary, which is fairly close to what people mean when they discuss it;

pov·er·ty

–noun
1.
the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence.
2.
deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc.: poverty of the soil.
3.
scantiness; insufficiency: Their efforts to stamp out disease were hampered by a poverty of Medical supplies

And of course, no one would wish that on children.  Poverty is a strong, emotive word.  It is also not the technical definition.  One of the technical definitions of poverty in the UK (perhaps the most usual one) is taken to those living bellow a certain percentage of the average** income, 60%.

I live in poverty, and have done so for my entire student career.  Amusing and more than slightly absurd that a well fed, nicely housed white middle class male often living in a white, middle class environment falls below "poverty", and it feels slightly patronising too.  This is "relative poverty".  There's also "social exclusion" which is perhaps a better definition to use, which labour moved onto - talking about areas with chronic unemployment, high crime, low standards of health, that sort of thing.

Absolute poverty doesn't exist in the UK.  By the day to day language poverty doesn't exist in the UK***, and hasn't for generations, ever since social housing, I'd guess.  Not really anything we can credit the current generation of politicians in the UK who would all be considered socialist by the standards back then.  But if you go out and say things like "relative child poverty needs to be eliminated" people will not respond as well to that as to if you exclude the relative.

The problem with this relative poverty is that you will never eliminate child poverty, short of supplementing the income of all parents of children up to £16,000 a year†.  Nice idea, if everyone was inclined to work hard but I can't see myself doing a £12,000 job a year if I was guaranteed income, especially given the shit tasks you would potentially have to do for a job that payed that.  Shop front, maybe, but box packing or cleaning?  Nope, I'd rather do nothing.  It's understandable, but I don't think it's a way you'd want your country to go.

And even if you did supply this money, you'd raise the median income, and thus have to pay more until the weight of single or childless poor held the line.  It wouldn't go up forever, but I suspect the amount of people having kids earlier would increase, leaving only those utterly unable to have kids; gays, infertile, socially non-functional, to do the jobs others won't.  Suppose it might raise their wages.

Essentially, you can't eliminate child poverty.  And thus Labour were either lying or had a complete misunderstanding of basic stats.  I'd guess the latter, they never really seemed inclined to any systematic assessment of evidence.

Having established that it's not viable to eliminate "poverty", it gets me thinking about what is the responsibility of the more affluent in society to those who are less affluent.  Because essentially that's what it is - those who earn more than the average wage contribute more to the same services than those who earn less than the average.  I'd say the opportunity to exceed what they were born into, by merit, or to allow everyone the same basic opportunities.

This is distinct from saying that all children, irrespective of background, will end up in the same place.  That will never happen, for social factors and simple genetics.  Rich people will try to ensure their children are rich, hard working people are more likely to have hard working children, clever people are more likely to have clever children, socially able people are more likely to have socially able children attractive people attractive children, tall people tall children.  That's why we try to pick the best partner available, they will inherit those traits.

So giving people opportunities based on merit.  Health care, yeah, make sure everyone has the opportunity to be healthy otherwise they'll find it really hard to take opportunities, education, given smart people from less privileged backgrounds to opportunity to go to University.  Universal crime enforcement, advice on jobs, an equal justice system, the capacity to vote their rulers in or out.  Ensure everyone has a house to live in and food to eat.  But what beyond that?  At what point do we say "we have given everyone enough of a chance to show their worth" and then let people be with what they've chosen?  I don't know, but it does seem that no politicians ever talk about that, although that line is clearly there, the limit of the financial resources we're willing to spend.

Maybe if we defined that point, measured the most effective way of enabling people to progress using correctly formulated statistics and then accepted that there are just people who won't do work (and there are) we could progress in a more sensible and effective manner.

* I know, a negative article.  I find it hard to find positive articles on labours record in those departments.

** median, if you're curious

***Homelessness is another, separate issue.  There are people who are unable to keep a house, but it's not due to lack of opportunities.  It's a very unfortunate thing and ought to be addressed by government

†Or take money from the rich and give it directly to the poor, resulting in ambitious people leaving the UK, those who generate ideas and wealth