Paul Ashton wrote --
Social policy academics and others claiming to represent poor people who
can come up with a figure like stlg84.76 a week as a 'stringent minimum
income' are, of course, ten a penny. What is more interesting is whether the
BBC bothered tried to find any researchers who think that the current level
of benefits is adequate, or any (of the many, according to surveys) benefit
recipients who don't find it a struggle to manage. Somehow I doubt it.
Paul Ashton
2002-07-14
== Paul raises an important methodological point. The BBC asked me about
my work on how to find out about the adequacy of social assistance
benefits. Precise cash sums are not part of that work and I did not
mention any, though others interviewed may have done. I quoted the
research I know of which includes government studies and which shows that
on average benefit levels do not give access to participatory levels of
living according to UK people's own standards. I also referred the BBC to
several research institutes which study these matters, where colleagues
should have been able to point to the research which Paul mentions.
The issues are 'on average' and 'participatory'. Every distribution has
tails, and some people may achieve participation as society defines it at
lower income levels, though most don't. By the same token, some don't
achieve it on higher income levels. Perhaps the BBC should have
interviewed them as well.
The other thing is that some people [and I have known some] choose to live
on a low level of income and to restrict their aspirations of
participation, because [in the cases I knew] they did not share the values
of consumerism and consumption which are dominant in our society. So they
would have asserted that they did not find it a struggle, and their diets
and health were good. But they lived very simple lives materially,
something which most UK people would not want to do.
So perhaps the BBC could have interviewed people who managed on less than
the sum quoted, but what do we know about the lives that they were able to
live? Did they sacrifice healthy diets [as measured by the experts] so
that they could take a full part culturally in society? Or did they give
up other, unseen, social necessities so that the seen things could be
reported to be OK? {that's a paraphrase from Seebohm Rowntree, actually,
because he knew full well that the appearances were not the same as the
realities of managing or of deprivations].
So if there are researchers who have found empirically that the weekly
incomes from JSA/IS are higher than those estimated to be needed for a
healthy diet in our society [and also to allow for a participatory life,
since this is a both/and matter and not an either/or] then I hope they
will produce their evidence to this debate and elsewhere publicly so that
it can be tested and replicated. I shall be delighted to learn that the
IS/JSA rates are adequate for full social and material life, if this can
be shown to be the case.
I was told the programme was about 'how does the government know that the
benefit levels are enough to live on?', and not about any particular sum.
I replied that my own research suggested that UK governments have always
known that benefit levels were not enough for decent participatory life,
but they have always defended this on the basis that [a] nor were low
wages and [b] it would be too expensive to increase benefits and to do
so would create incentive problems with inadequate low wages levels. If
this is untrue, the challenge lies with the government to show in what
ways it is untrue. It may be that things will change in the future, but in
the mean time I look forward to seeing the evidence, and to hearing the
programme to find out what other researchers and claimants have said
about the adequacy of the benefits.
So, Paul, the challenge to you is, what proportion of people dependent on
JSA/IS benefits can manage without a struggle, and what proportion find it
a struggle? And what can the research you quote [references, please] tell
us about the degree and quality of participatory achievements of those who
manage without a struggle? In other words, can you give us empirical
evidence which refutes the majority view which you seem to criticise?
John VW.
-------------------------------------------------------------
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]>.
|