http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2012/nov-2012/dwp121-12.shtml

List members who have not yet responded to this important consultation are reminded that the closing date for DWP's receipt of responses is 15 February.

The consultation is important because the government wants to move away from measuring child/family poverty in terms of the relationship between the disposable cash incomes of parents' households and equivalised median household incomes [the HBAI or income inequality methods] and related methods in the 2010 Child Poverty Act, to methods which take greater account of the consequences of poverty for the health and wellbeing of family members and the employment and other conditions in which they live.

Whatever the arguable case for moving away from an income inequality measure to an income adequacy measure [which is not offered here as a possibility], the consultation document and the specific questions it asks seem [to me at least] to confuse non-discriminating descriptors with discriminating criteria of poverty which can be quantified and measured. The result could be, if the government implements what it is consulting about, that poverty becomes measured in terms of such common characteristics as family breakdown, ill-health, lack of skills, inadequate housing, 'poor' schools [whatever they are], 'worklessness' [meaning paid employment not work], and similar factors which do not discriminate between poor and other, non-poor, people. Whether this will lead to people in poverty being counted in terms of any of the characteristics [vastly greater numbers in poverty, including my favourite example, the Royal Family], or only when they all coincide [very small numbers indeed] can't be predicted, but whichever it is will be misleading about what distinguishes people in poverty from those who aren't.

This epistemological and methodological confusion is of course so commonplace in media and political circles that it's hardly worth commenting on it again, but when government proposes it as a possible basis for one of the most policy-important statistical bases in the country, it is a serious matter. I've been told that responses to DWP are not only very welcome but are counted, perhaps to help it gain an indication of the importance given to the question by 'the public', in this case the informed and social-science sophisticated public.

I've also been reminded not to be frustrated by the apparent impossibililty of answering some of the questions but to focus instead on offering a clear response [not necessarily on the website itself] to the key issue, what is or are the key discriminating factor/s which is/are quantifiable and measurable by which families in poverty should be counted better than at present. Given the global agreement [though not by the current UK government] that this essential factor in poverty is lack of power over the necessary resources to meet socially-defined minimum living standards for social inclusion, which in our society means having enough money at least to cope with all the other problems, or to buy one's way out of them as the Royal Family and the rest of us do, that's what I shall be answering. Those of us concerned with family and child poverty hope as many informed people as possible will respond in their own terms.

Members who don't want to respond may nevertheless be interested in reading the document as an example of the current quality of government consultation. Scholars with historical and comparative perspectives will be fascinated. My apologies as usual for list duplications.

John VW.