Whilst it is easy to suggest what ‘poverty’ is, creating a definition is much harder. Poverty is not just about wealth, or a lack of. It now includes a person’s ability to access education, services and life chances for instance. There is no single, universally accepted standard definition of poverty. Modern definitions of poverty have moved away from conceptions based on a lack of physical necessities towards a more social and relative understanding.
It also underpins and influences every aspect of a person’s life, throughout their life. Because of this, the presence of poverty within a community or person will affect almost every other priority outcome in this document. This explains why there is very little data in this chapter, for such an important issue.
The European Union defines poverty as “…those whose resources (material, cultural and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the member states in which they life”
Life circumstances are important factors that impact directly on the health social care and wellbeing of both individuals and communities. The circumstances in which people live impact directly on both their mental and physical health and their general wellbeing. Other factors include physical environment, economy, community wellbeing, housing and social environment amongst others.
Poverty is both a symptom and cause of low income, poor access to services (such as health and education), facilities (such as leisure centres), work opportunities and good quality housing.
The Westminster Government use a simple, financial-based definition: ‘households with incomes below 60% of the National Median Net Disposable Income’. (Department of Work and Pensions).
A recognised measure of poverty is Households Below Average Income (HBAI). It uses relative incomes on both before housing costs and an after housing costs basis and adopts a 60% of median income as a proxy for the poverty line. The after housing costs measure provides the best indicator of disposable income. In Wales for example a higher percentage of children are defined as in poverty using the after housing costs as compared with the before housing costs measure. It also uses the British Household Panel Survey to provide estimates of the persistence of poverty.
HBAI figures 2003/04 show, that after housing costs, 27 per cent of children in Wales lived in households with incomes below 60% of the median, higher than the British average.
Uptake of free school meals is another commonly used indicator of poverty, although it is only based on financial poverty of the child’s family. Those whose parents are claiming Income Support or Income-based Job Seekers Allowance are eligible for free school meals. The graph below, based on the 2004-06 average shows that the level of primary school children eligible for free school meals in Merthyr Tydfil is the second highest in Wales. However, while the underlying data is sound, its relationship to all aspects of poverty and social exclusion are not immediately clear.
In 2004, there were 3.4 million children in the UK living in poverty, which represented a higher proportion than most rich countries. Although 700,000 children had been lifted out of poverty in between 1998 and 2005, the proportion of children in poverty has doubled in the last generation.
Children and young people growing up in poverty are more likely to live in deprived communities and poor housing; to experience poor physical and mental health; to have learning and behavioural difficulties; to underachieve at school and be excluded from school; to experience restricted access to extra-curricular, social, leisure and cultural activities; to become pregnant at an early age; to have lower skills and aspirations, and to be low paid, unemployed and dependent on welfare benefits as adults. Those most likely to be affected include:
- children of lone parents;
- children growing up in families where there are three or more children;
- children from some minority ethnic families;
- children growing up in households where there is no-one in full-time employment,
- children in households with a disabled child or adult.
More than half the families of disabled children in the UK experience poverty and the social exclusion that results from it.
People living in deprived areas have statistically significantly higher levels of ill-health (including hearing / sight problems, pedestrian injury, mental illness, and increased infant mortality), and greater exposure to major health risk factors (including physical inactivity, smoking, obesity, poor diet), than those living elsewhere.
Living with disadvantage for some young people may mean becoming accustomed to economic and social restrictions, thus reducing immediate expectations of life, and limiting aspirations for the future (Further research information here).
Disadvantage has many forms: having few family assets; having a poorer education during adolescence; having a low-skilled job or insecure employment; living in poor housing and trying to bring up a family in difficult circumstances. These disadvantages tend to concentrate among the same people, and their effects on health are cumulative. The longer people live in stressful economic and social circumstances, the greater the physical and psychological wear and tear they suffer, and the less likely they are to enjoy a healthy old age.
Social exclusion arises when people or areas suffer from a combination on interrelated problems such as those indicated above. For example physical and mental health are influenced by the stress associated with living in neighbourhoods where the environment is seen as threatening, where the quality or safety of the housing is poor and transport facilities are lacking. The social support networks, relationships, and levels of participation and trust in a community are important influences on the health of individuals in that community and on local capacity to address health problems.
The Communities that Care risk audit identified key risk factors that would increase the risk of children and young people becoming vulnerable, many of which are particularly relevant to this Core Aim. The findings of this report are included in previous Core Aim chapters :
Family:
Poor parental supervision and discipline; family conflict; family history of problem behaviour; parental involvement/attitudes condoning problem behaviour; low income and poor housing.
School:
Low achievement first identified in primary school; aggressive behaviour, including bullying; lack of commitment, including truancy; school disorganisation.
Community:
Disadvantaged neighbourhood; community disorganisation and neglect; availability of drugs; high turnover and lack of neighbourhood attachment.
Individuals, friends and peers:
Alienation and local of social commitment; attitudes that condone problem behaviour; early involvement in problem behaviour; friends involved in problem behaviour.
Access to services is an unobvious determinant of poverty. Beyond the financial capacity to own and maintain a vehicle, a reliance on public transport will always decrease a families’ ability to access services. It also affects a person’s ability to seek and gain employment. Merthyr Tydfil has the lowest level of car ownership in Wales and the lowest level of households with at least one person driving to work.