Raising awareness of the impact of inequality, and you can help


11:35 am - June 5th 2012

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contribution by Jeremy Cliffe

This week Unicef published a new report warning that UK child poverty is set to rise, and accusing the government of delivering a “catastrophic blow to the futures of thousands of children.”

The conclusion is consistent with last autumn’s IFS forecast predicting that some 400,000 will be pulled under the poverty line by government cuts, and that by 2020, 23% of British children will live in poverty.

But the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), close to the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, this week called this “crude and flawed.”

Of course, ‘absolute poverty’ – the fulfilment of base needs – matters. But various ‘absolute’ measures (crime, social mobility, health, violence, teenage pregnancy) correlate closely to relative poverty: to the level of inequality in a society.

This is the thesis of The Spirit Level, a book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett that levels of imprisonment, drug abuse and mental illness are higher in unequal societies, and that levels of social mobility, trust and health are lower.

The CSJ argues that the relative child poverty measure “confuses poverty with inequality”, brushing aside the latter as “inevitable in a free society”. It calls for a focus on the “underlying causes of blighted young lives, such as family breakdown, welfare dependency and educational failure, rather than the symptoms of low relative income.”

In doing so, it betrays an all-too common attitude: that the size of the gap per se has no bearing on the impoverished condition of those children at the bottom; that “the symptoms of low relative income” are fundamentally distinct from these broader social problems.

That is why a team led by Katharine Round are currently raising money to make The Spirit Level into an international documentary. Drawing inspiration from such agenda-setting titles as An Inconvenient Truth and The Age of Stupid, this promises to communicate the effects of inequality, on children and others

The film will blend hard evidence with human tales from around the globe. The aims: spread the word, spark action, and achieve real, tangible change.

Those interested in backing the campaign can do so in several ways. If just 2,500 people pre-buy a download, it will meet its £30,000 target; with one month left to go, the campaign is already over halfway there.

But this is not about money. Supporters are equally urged to link to the campaign website, share and re-tweet the Facebook and Twitter pages, and sign up for the mailing list.
www.indiegogo.com/spiritlevelfilm

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Reader comments


1. Shatterface

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

– Anatole France

That’s often misquoted as there’s one law for the rich and another for the poor, which misunderstands the point: the law privileges the rich even when applied consistently.

Now, however, thanks to the Jubilee, there really is two laws – one of which obliges jobseekers to sleep under bridges:

http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/general-coffeehouse-chat-514/news-current-affairs-topical-discussion-12/773865-unemployed-made-do-unpaid-work-jubilee-sleep-under-bridge.html

2. Ben2

Essentially though this will be telling the bleeding obvious to people who already know it, and people who reject Adam Smiths discussion of relative poverty in ‘Wealth of Nations’ will still say things like ‘they have a fridge, they should sell that to buy food’.

3. jungle

CSJ: “…underlying causes of blighted young lives, such as family breakdown, welfare dependency and educational failure, rather than the symptoms of low relative income”

Isn’t that basically politically correct code for blaming poverty on the poor being irreligious, lazy and stupid?

I don’t think the CSJ is really remotely interested in combating poverty. I think the CSJ is mainly interested in finding ways to justify a free market-determined (and therefore in their eyes not only inevitable but also entirely correct and just) level of poverty to the wider public.

They’re quite correct that replacing the regular statistical updates from ONS on poverty with regular statistical updates on the various moral failings of the poor is very likely to help in this aim.

4. Chaise Guevara

@ 1

The law, like the Ritz, is open to the rich and poor alike.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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