With all our mighty brain cells and stuff we still haven’t got rid of the abomination of poverty. People have been going on about it for millennia and today around 85% of the global population lives in poverty (when calculated as purchasing power parity). We can’t even get that sorted out.
21st century and people in the UK are queuing at food banks, going to museums and suchlike to get warm. 1 in every 5 people in the UK is living in poverty, 1 in 3 children. Women living in the wealthier areas of Britain have live nearly 8 years longer than those living in deprived areas.
Seriously? That’s the sort of thing that gets so up my bugle I can’t describe it.
According to Wikipedia “Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income”
The wiki article explains quite nicely the difference between absolute poverty, those who don’t have enough to get what they need (food, clothing, heating/cooling etc) and relative poverty (low socioeconomic status when compared to others in the same area). a French person I know who had principally visited the south-east of England (a relatively wealthier area) was worried about going to live and work in the south-west (a relatively poorer area) because his car is a bit of a wreck. In the south-east his car stood out like a very sore thumb, in the south-west it blended right in, he thus felt much less like “that poor sod who drives a rust heap”. A phrase full of colloquialisms he had trouble understanding at first.
Absolute poverty provokes a long list of nasty stuff, not enough to eat, few clothes, poor housing and more. These things have direct negative impacts on health and on life expectancy, these impacts start in the womb, continue through childhood and leave lasting traces for the rest of a person’s life. They are, if you like, physically locked in. An excellent read which explains a lot of these things is Sapolsky’s “Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst”. Some “stack high, sell cheap” retailers in the USA sell cartons of milk which contain a quarter of a pint. When compared price/quantity with a whole pint carton the quarter pint is much more expensive. Many consumers are forced to buy the small container because they don’t have sufficient revenue to buy the big one. This maintains and worsens these person’s socioeconomic status.
With regard to relative poverty something that is not appreciated widely enough is that many of the negative impacts of poverty are due to the proximity between well off people and those who are not. Some researchers think that 2/3rds of the negative impacts of poverty are due to this living side by side. Obviously as the rich get richer this exacerbates these negative impacts. An example of this effect can be seen in the statistics of violence on aircraft. There is a higher probability of violence kicking off on jets where 2nd class passengers have to board going through 1st class.
Secondary poverty concerns those people/households who would have enough revenue to not be considered poor but who spend a part of their income on non-essential goods and services such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. These expenditures mean that the person/household is effectively poor in that there is not enough money left over to cover food, clothing, heating/cooling, rent expenses etc.
Quality poverty is best summarised by “buy cheap, buy thrice” or by the Vimes effect (from Terry Pratchett). People who are well off can afford better quality goods which are more expensive but last longer, these people have to replace their goods less often so save money in the longer term.
Climate effect. In general and for a lot of people climate change will negatively impact their socioeconomic status. Lower yields for subsistence farmers for example.“A report published in 2013 by the World Bank, with support from the Climate & Development Knowledge Network, found that climate change was likely to hinder future attempts to reduce poverty.”
Ok, so far so bad. The question is what can you and I do about it?
Wait for the government to sort it out. Could be good except the track record of all the different political factions isn’t something to celebrate. Some have made absolute poverty worse and a lot have made absolute and relative poverty worse.
Wait for something to trickle across from the rich. Well this doesn’t seem to work either. If it did then there would be a lot less poverty thanks to the economic booms and crashes of recent years making the rich richer. This might be the moment to talk about the Mathew effect “people who have already got some stuff are most likely to get more”.
The Motörhead approach “eat the rich”. It’s been tried a few times, usually through revolutions. It doesn’t seem to work as inequality either doesn’t go away or comes straight back and then gets worse and worse. Basically because certain things will thrive under certain conditions and these revolutions have never managed to really change the underlying conditions that cause inequality.
Go prosocial! see the rest :