Why Fight Poverty?. Julia Unwin

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Figure 2.1. Public attitudes to the welfare state. Source: British Social Attitudes Survey, NatCen.

      There have been enduring challenges to these views, however. Many politicians, philanthropists, practitioners and members of the public have long advocated that poverty not only exists meaningfully in the United Kingdom but that it also matters both for individuals and for society.

      For centuries, reformers have argued – in different ways and from different perspectives – that there are hard-headed, pragmatic reasons for fighting poverty. They have pointed to the waste of human potential, and the opportunities lost by allowing people to remain in penury. They have argued too that those without sufficient income are unable to participate in an economy that requires consumption. They have identified the costs associated with high levels of poverty, noting the long-term costs to the economy of people and places blighted in this way. And they have noted the risks to our shared society of people whose lack of income ­effectively forces them to live outside social norms. Waste, cost and risk are balance-sheet concerns that have been documented by social reformers of all stripes, motivations and political persuasions.

      Joseph Rowntree, a Quaker and industrialist, argued that the causes of poverty were primarily structural.

      Seebohm Rowntree’s 1899 Study of Town Life examined poverty by surveying the minimum basket of goods and nutrition a household needed in relation to their income. He found that – in a striking parallel with the twenty-first century – over half of those in poverty were also in work.23

      Beatrice Webb was concerned about the effect of poverty on people’s morality and capability. She argued that the Poor Laws resulted in a loss of self-respect and dignity, which increased the persistence of poverty, and further increased expense.24 The Poor Laws were also ineffective because they focused on individual behaviour, whereas Webb believed the main causes to be structural, or factors beyond individual control, such as illness. The waste of human life was also central in her concern; for example, unnecessarily high infant mortality due to parents entering the workhouse.

      Webb advocated universal provision that did not separate destitute people from everyone else. Means testing cost more money and categorizing people was demoralizing and stigmatizing.

      William Beveridge argued that unemployment was a problem because it left people without resources, wasted their skills, and, more importantly, left them outside civic life.25

      He believed that any social contract should be based around mutual solidarity, contractual entitlement, active citizenship and altruism. He supported contributory principles that would help the individual, state and market to work together. Beveridge advocated solutions that would address what he perceived to be the root causes of poverty, while always focusing on the whole population, and resisting efforts to focus only on the poorest. He believed that improving morals without reorganizing industry would fail to create jobs, as ‘inadequate character’ was largely determined by adverse industrial conditions.26 He argued that people should always be better off in work than with social security and that any solutions to poverty should not undermine incentives to work. Subsidy would be minimal and there would be controls against fraud and abuse.27

      All of these pioneering analysts avoided sentimentality. As we have seen from this briefest of overviews, those who wished to eradicate poverty had three main arguments; their concern was with the costs and waste of poverty, and with the risk both for the individual and society. They believed that interventions could reduce these.

      Beveridge’s predecessors were dismayed when they encountered rickets-ridden young men incapable of fighting in the Boer War, so they instituted free school meals as a way of overcoming malnutrition. In the same way, we are concerned about the waste of skills, opportunities and creativity that poverty creates today.

      The current costs of poverty

      Recent research supports the view that poverty squanders human ability, capability and potential.

      Pupils eligible for free school meals are almost half as likely to achieve five or more A*–C grades at GCSE compared with those who are not eligible.28 Figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that the number of underemployed workers now stands at 3.05 million (2012), a rise of nearly 1 million since 2008 (Figure 2.2). Nearly three-quarters say they want to work more hours in their current job, although this may mean they want to earn more rather than work longer hours.29 Poverty is wasteful to a country in desperate need of the skills and capacity needed to compete globally.