It may be a very good thing to reduce the degree of income inequality in
the UK and other countries, but this is not the same thing as reducing the
scale of poverty, for reasons which several correspondents have already
mentioned.
I should find the distributive percentile approach less offensive if we
didn't know that it was originally chosen politically in Europe as a
deliberate evasion from considering what percentile the empirical evidence
showed [in time and place] reflected household incomes adequate to avoid
poverty, deprivation and exclusion. That is why governments like it.
Economists and statisticians like it too because it seems to be value
free, which means devoid of social meaning. For those of us who believe
that poverty can be considered only in terms of social meanings, this is
at best intellectual cowardice and perhaps worse. What on earth is the
point of saying -- as Koen has just reminded us -- "let us assume that
the poverty line is such and such a percentile"? Any fool can do that. The
real issue is, what empirical evidence justifies such a normative
assumption?
What little empirical evidence there seems to be is dated [UK in 1980s;
New Zealand 1990-ish] but it all suggested that adequacy was achieved only
at income levels well above the half-mean or 60 per cent median levels in
those countries at those times. There is no a priori reason to assume even
that the percentile will remain constant over time or place. It should be
a derivative of evidence, not a substitute for it.
The challenge to all those who defend the statistical normative approach
as a measure of poverty is to provide the empirical evidence that it means
anything other than some point within the range of [not on the margin of]
incomes inadequate to meet socially defined adequacy or participation
standards. Until they do, it remains nothing more than an arbitrary
measure of inequality chosen to avoid confronting the empirical realities
of adequate income levels. I do not know if Tony Blair knows this, but
either way it reflects badly on his remarks..
Sorry if I sound intemperate. I find the intellectual evasions very
frustrating and wish economists and statisticians would start to engage
with the real issue -- how to conceptualise and measure what adequacy
means before they talk about a poverty which their disciplines have no
means of understanding. I am puzzled why sociologists and social
policy people have let them get away with it for so long. JohnVW.
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From Professor J. H. Veit-Wilson
Department of Sociology and Social Policy
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE NE1 7RU, England.
Telephones: +44-191-222-7498 or +44-191-266-2428
Fax: +44-191-222-7497.
E-mail: <[log in to unmask]>.
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