Paul Spicker says that
> Child poverty is being measured in relationship to
>the median income
Being measured by whom though? Not by Gordon Brown when he made that promise
on child poverty, as David Piachaud has made clear in his New Economy piece
'Progress on poverty: Will Blair deliver on eliminating child poverty?':
'To consider the impact of changes on poverty over the five year period up
to 2002, it is assumed that the appropriate poverty level is that which the
Chancellor has used in discussing child poverty, namely a level of half
average income.'
Similarly John Hills:
'Official calculations suggest that the measures taken so far ‘will lift
1.2 million children out of poverty’, using a poverty line of half average
income' (Taxation For The Enabling State, CASEpaper 41 August 2000)
Other academics using the half mean income definition include Stephen
Jenkins:
'We use two different poverty lines for calculating long-range poverty
trends: half contemporary mean income and half 1991 mean income. These are
similar to those employed in the official British low income statistics',
Poverty among british children: chronic or transitory? December 1999),
and Francesco Devicienti
'Reflecting previous UK research, I have initially considered two
alternative definitions for the low income cut-off: half wave 1 mean income
is chosen as an absolute (fixed in real terms) poverty line, while half
contemporaneous mean income is taken as a relative poverty line.', Poverty
persistence in Britain: a multivariate analysis using the BHPS, 1991-1997,
Working Paper 2001-02 12 September 2000.
As John Veit-Wilson pointed out in his recent memo to the Select Committee
on Social Security, both the half average income and the 60% of median
concept of poverty is, in reality, just a measure of unequal incomes:
'while the government admits that "low income is an important aspect of
poverty", at present it has no idea of what income level would be needed to
abolish poverty in households containing children. Its measure of poverty
for this purpose, the statistics of Households Below Average Income (HBAI)
is acknowledged to be no more than a measure of unequal income and not of
adequate income, and no one knows if half the mean or 60 per cent of the
median is too high, too low or about right to achieve the intended
objective of preventing deprivations and social exclusions.'
Paul A
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