Book Reviews
Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain: The Millennium Survey
Christina Pantazis, David Gordon and Ruth Levitas (eds)
ISBN: 978-1-861343-73-4 2006 512 pages Policy Press
Monica Åberg Yngwe
Centre for Health Equity Studies
Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet
Sweden
In 1985, Mack and Lansley published Poor Britain, based on the consensual deprivation method, identifying the minimum acceptable level of living in Britain by recognising the necessities of life by public opinion. Based in this tradition, the Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) survey in 1999 examined poverty among adults and children in various social groups. The data provides a unique and rigorous mapping of poverty with its use of both consensual and more conventional poverty measures. There is richness in this investigation, holding measures we hope to find in other future studies. This 2006 anthology, based on the PSE data, is dedicated to the inventors of the consensual poverty method.
Overall, the book provides a broad picture of how poverty can be measured and gives a better understanding of the processes of social exclusion. This critique is mainly related to documentation, power and the representativeness of the data.
The first chapter includes an all too short description of the data collection. Even though this is not supposed to be a manual for the PSE data, there are several questions left unanswered due to the fact that we lack the possibility of evaluating the quality of the data. The other drawback is that the sample consists only of about 1500 respondents. Being also a follow-up sample to the General Household Survey, questions on the missing data, and how missing data is distributed in different groups, raises the question of whether the sample is fully representative and can be extrapolated to the whole population. The concluding chapter states that the book is the core summary of the PSE survey methodology and findings: yet we are given only a reference to a website to find information on the variables.
The book is organised in three parts, divided into principles, processes and people. In part one, principles, the chapters focus on the theories and concepts of poverty and social exclusion. Chapter Two, written by David Gordon, is a comprehensive description of the concept and measurement of poverty, reviewing the problems and controversies in defining poverty. Three different measures, argued to hold a number of technical and theoretical advances, are used: the consensual measurement, the income poverty measurement and the subjective measurement. All three measures produce similar results, showing about 25% of the population to be living in poverty. Starting here, and all through the book, we see alarming results from Britain. Considering the fact that the book is dedicated to the founders of the consensual poverty method, it is appropriate that Chapter Four, The necessities of life, by Pantazis, Gordon and Townsend, is one of the best chapters in this volume; worth reading for anyone interested in this method. The breakthrough of Mack and Lansley (1985) was not only the focus on public opinion, instead of poverty lines set by experts, but also the importance of necessities beyond food and shelter: necessities important for the individual to participate in society. In the PSE survey, there is an analysis of the differences in perception of necessities between men and women, younger and older persons, minority ethnic and non-minority ethic, and social class differences; providing support for the importance of using different measures. This chapter also contains a defence of the critique previously raised against the consensual approach. However, one could also have wished for some overall discussion on the shortcomings of the PSE. There must be some consideration of the fact that this is a small sample, consisting of 1500 individuals. It is also difficult to interpret the effects of this being a sample from the General Household Survey.
The second part, processes, explores the roads into poverty in Britain, starting with the chapter, Does work pay? Employment, poverty and exclusion from social relations (by Nick Bailey). Employment is a fundamental resource for avoiding poverty, but this chapter extends the question to also explore whether more work leads to a lower risk of poverty or exclusion, by comparing those working full-time and part-time, and also analyses whether the benefits of work are the same for men and women. In contrast to previous studies, these results show that part-time employment is associated with lower levels of exclusion compared with full-time work and no work. This chapter presents interesting results and highlights the methodological problems regarding the risk of reversed causation using cross-sectional data, raising the idea that differences in social networks, sociability and social support might explain differences in employment status. In the end, the author chooses to interpret the causality as mostly important from employment status to the social outcomes. He finds that women gain more from work in financial terms when analysing subjective poverty measures. This is an interesting result since objective measures often implicitly assume an equal distribution within the household.
Further processes are analysed in the chapters, Debt and financial exclusion; Social exclusion and local services; Crime, ‘disorder', insecurity and social exclusion, and finally Mental health, poverty and social exclusion. Mental health, here measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), is the only health effect of poverty discussed in this volume, which I find to be a bit scarce. In the chapter, author Sarah Payne discusses the causal relation between poverty and mental health. A range of different measures of poverty are analysed, among others a subjective measure which asks the respondent if he or she feels poor without defining what is to be regarded as ‘poor'. Interestingly, a tenth of those answering that they ‘never felt poor' are, if fact, defined as poor when using objective measures. One explanation here is that this group has developed lower expectations. Even though to ‘feel poor' is related to mental health, the objective measure is found to be more related. Being a researcher in public health, I do of course find these questions interesting and could only have wished for some more chapters on the health consequences of poverty and social exclusion. There is today a major discussion on the relation between income/poverty and health, and since the PSE applies a range of poverty measures, such analyses could have made an interesting contribution to this area. (As far as I understand, the PSE also includes some other self-rated health measures).
The final part of the book, People, discusses and analyses the extent of poverty and social exclusion among children, youth, pensioners, lone mothers and between genders. An interesting contribution to the research on child poverty is the PSE survey list of 30 items and activities for measuring necessities among children. Asking the respondents whether the item was necessary and something no child should have to go without, almost all items were here considered as necessary by the population. At the end of the volume, an enlightening and important chapter on ‘Gender, poverty and social exclusion' is presented. As the authors (Pantazis and Ruspini) state, both poverty and social exclusion are gendered experiences, facts that are often neglected. They show that regardless of the poverty measure used, women are more likely to be impoverished. Their findings, together with results from previous chapters - discussing priorities related to what can be regarded as necessities in life and highlighting the fact that distribution within households might be unequal - raise the need for a better understanding of the different roads to poverty and social exclusion; and as the authors argue, more ‘gender-sensitive' policies. This issue becomes even more relevant in the following chapter where one of the poorest groups in society - lone mothers - is analysed. A larger part on policies could have been useful, starting with describing prevailing social policies in these areas and, based on the results found, giving suggestions on how these could better serve the poor in Britain.
The book serves the purpose of explaining the concepts of poverty and social exclusion, but has some shortcomings analytically. The PSE data surely consists of several interesting measures and at the same time the presented results show alarming and enlightening figures. However, the small sample, lack of relevant information on the data and the fact that this is a sub-sample from the General Household Survey make it difficult to see through the presented analyses and raise questions on generalisability. Dividing the book into sections on principles, processes and people makes this volume valuable for a broader academic audience, but the inclusion of sections on public health and policy would have broadened the audience further and might even have launched new ideas for greater ongoing discussion.
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