Life chances & poverty in the UK By Hayley Blow, Martell Whitlock and Beth Wright

Life chances? A life chance refers to the opportunity to achieve good, ambition or desire. The ambitions we have for our futures are just dreams unless we find a way of making them reality. The ingredients required to achieve our ambitions in life can be called life chances. An examination of life chances must consider the access or lack of access to opportunities that influence our life chance.

what about you? What are your ambitions in life? And what life chances have you got? Do you have access or a lack of access to opportunities that influence our life chance?

More on life chances Exploring life chances we focus on the key theme of meritocracy. Meritocracy refers to the view that society mainly allocates jobs, positions and roles according to an individuals ability and/or hard work - not according to preference, prejudice or nepotism. Nepotism means favouring family members.

Even more... Some people are lucky by being in the right place the right time or being born to the right parents, ability to go to the 'best' schools or living in an area with a stable economy, free from natural disasters. In the UK there are 4 key aspects which influence life chances: education, income, employment and health. These themes vary across the country and from person to person. Life chances are also relative to where a person lives or their personal circumstances.

Max Weber and Karl Marx The concept of life chances was introduced by max Weber. Weber’s idea of life chances can be seen as an expansion on some of Karl Marx's ideas. Both Weber and Marx agree that life chances are affected by economic factors. Marx decided that social class was the most important factor, where as, Weber introduced other factors, such as social mobility and social equality to the concept.

New right and social democratic theories Social democracy is the theory that everyone helps everyone else. For example, paying taxes for health care and other public services. New right is the idea of privatisation, like the idea of private NHS. In Britain we prefer the idea of social democracy. In the US they prefer the idea of new right.

Poverty in the UK some households have higher costs than others for example a household with children will have a higher cost than a household with no children. a household with more children will require more benefits than a household without children. all households benefit from government spending on services such as health service, police etc.

Some benefit more than others Retired households pay less tax than they receive n benefits, so gain over all. single adult households with no children pay more taxes than they receive benefits so they benefit less. households with children benefit the most because they have education and health services and the amount of money the government gives to services for children. cash benefits make up to 61% of gross income for the poorest 5th of households, 39% for the next group and 2% for the top 5th.

What causes poverty? the views on what causes poverty can be placed into two broad categories first the structural and the second individual behaviour model. structural model : argues that causes of poverty are beyond the control of individuals.

Consequences of poverty -children in poverty are living with poor health and in squalid housing. -no warm clothing, going on school trips or having friends round to play. -poverty damages children's life chances and opportunities. They are half as likely to get 5 good GCSE;s as those who are not. In London there is a high proportion of groups of children that are at high risk of poverty, mainly black and minority ethnic children, children of single parents and children in large families.

The cycle of poverty The cycle of poverty is "the set of factors or events by which poverty, once started, is likely to continue unless there is outside intervention." These families have either limited or no resources. Sometimes poor people do not have the resources necessary to get out of poverty, such as financial capital, education or connections.

More on the poverty cycle It is almost impossible for a child to get out of the poverty cycle due to age, lack of experience and lack of job. Studies have shown that household structure sometimes has a connection to childhood poverty. Most studies on the subject also show that the children that are in poverty tend to come from single-parent household. Both urban and rural poor children are more likely to be isolated from the non-poor in schools, neighbourhoods, and their communities.

And some more... Human nature is to have relationships with others but when a child is isolated due to their socioeconomic status, it's hard to overcome that when the status doesn't improve. Therefore, poor children also have more tense relationships which sometimes results in abnormal behaviour, acting out, or other unexplained behaviors

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