Whilst reading today’s Independent I was struck by the definition of poverty used by government statisticians. According to the article by Jonathan Owen the poverty line for a family of four is £357 a week after housing costs which translates to £18,564 a year. That got me thinking as I, like most people I suspect, assumed that poverty meant hungry children in rags and begging on the streets. OK so we are talking about relative poverty in the UK but just the use of the term poverty seems really over the top for a person earning £18,564 a year and has his housing costs paid for. Is this really a definition of poverty? Well the government measure used to define poverty is those living in a household with an income of less than 60% of the national average which currently means £357 a week for a family of four and excludes housing costs. It cannot be all sweetness and light for a family of four living on this level of income but it also does not seem like real poverty.
What strikes me about this definition of poverty is that it is totally distorted by the huge gap that opened up between rich and poor in this country since the days of Mrs Thatcher and the acceptance of ‘greed is good’ by successive Tory and Labour governments. The average income figure is skewed by the presence of a relatively few astronomically wealthy individuals. That gap has actually been narrowed a bit by the Coalition since 2010 with measures such as raising the personal income tax allowance, the pupil premium and now the expansion of free school meals but there is still a huge difference between rich and poor in our country.
The government needs a different measure of poverty in this country, one that can provide a useful measure of those in dire straits without reference to the filthy rich. That will help future governments target their efforts at those in really desperate need.