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Issue Description
In 2005/06, 22% of people in Britain were income poor, living in households with below 60% of the median income after housing costs. Many of these households will contain children, who may never escape from the cycle of poverty and exclusion – current research shows that children from a disadvantaged background can be up to two years behind their classmates educationally by the age of 14. Globally, half the world’s population live in absolute poverty on less than $2 a day. Poverty and Exclusion looks at poverty in the UK and overseas.
The information comes from a wide range of sources and includes government reports and statistics, newspaper reports, features, magazine articles and surveys, literature from lobby groups and charitable organisations.
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Key Facts
- In 2005/06, 12.7 million people in the UK (22 per cent) were income poor, living in households with below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs. Though in recent years this has been falling, in 2005/06 it rose. In 1979, 15 per cent were in this position. (page 1)
- People in Britain are concerned about inequality, but they are less likely to support government interventions designed to tackle poverty or redistribute income than they were 20 years ago. Indeed, according to the latest British Social Attitudes report, published by NatCen, one in four people think that poverty is due to laziness or lack of willpower, up from one in five in 1986. (page 3)
There are an estimated three million disabled people living in relative poverty in the UK. (page 10) - Barnardo’s estimates that the costs to the UK economy in not tackling child poverty total more than £40 billion a year. (page 11)
By the time they move to secondary school poorer children are on average two years behind better-off children. (page 18) - Of the world’s 6.1 billion people, some 1.1 billion live in extreme poverty. (page 25)
- Globally, people are described as living in poverty if they have less than US$1 a day to live on. (page 28)
852 million people do not have enough to eat, 1.3 billion have no safe water, 2 billion have no access to electricity and 3 billion have no sanitation. (page 29) - Altogether, developing countries pay around £600 million every day to the rich world. For every £1 that poor countries receive in aid, they pay out more than £2 in debt service. (page 33)
ActionAid findings show that the public has an astonishingly high estimation of how much UK public money is being spent on overseas aid. The mean average estimate for the proportion of government spending accounted for by aid was 18.55%. The actual figure is only 1.3%. (page 35)
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Table of Contents
Chapter One: Poverty in the UK
Poverty: the facts, Britons lose sympathy for the poor, Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2007, Missing school trips makes you poor, say British kids, Britain’s forgotten poor, Household income, Wage gap too large, say three out of four Britons, Minimum living standards, Growing inequality, Disabled people and poverty, Paying the price of poverty, Poverty and debt, Living with hardship 24/7, Public attitudes to child poverty, Keeping mum, The cost of education, Social exclusion and education, 2 skint 4 school, Child poverty: true or false?, Disadvantage and achievement, Mind the gap, One in five UK families can’t afford heating, What are benefits?, Benefit claims and poverty, Welfare shake-up scraps incapacity benefit.
Chapter Two: Global Poverty
Poverty: a 10-minute guide, Life on $1 a day, Global poverty, Facts and figures, Poverty, hunger and disease, It’s a question of debt, Aid questions and answers, Paying for poverty, Public attitudes to aid, Only trade can solve global poverty, How foreign aid can damage the poorest.
Key Facts
Glossary
Index
Additional Resources
Acknowledgements
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The Study Guide for: Poverty and Exclusion - Volume 160
Each book in the Issues series has a study guide. These four-page guides provide a variety of discussion points and other activities to suit a wide range of ability levels and interests.
Publisher: Independence Educational Publishers
Price: £1.95
ISBN: 978 1 86168 476 9
