1. Poverty and Deprivation: Statistics for Action
Resolution Foundation/Royal Statistical Society/Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Keynote
Jonathan Bradshaw
10 February 2015

2. A story of empirical and conceptual progress
Seebohm Rowntree’s 1951 Poverty and the welfare state – normative budget standard threshold
Abel Smith and Townsend’s The Poor and the Poorest 1965 early analysis of FES –NAB scales threshold
MPNI Financial Circumstances of Retirement Pensioners (1965); Circumstances of Families (1967)
Low Income Families series FES – SBC scale threshold from ?1970s- 1985
Townsend Poverty in the UK eventually published 1979 – deprivation introduced into poverty measurement
Mack and Lansley Poor Britain (1985) –enforce lack of Socially Perceived Necessities
DWP Households below average incomes – relative income threshold FRS improving every year published from 1983 to present.
HBAI incorporated deprivation indicators after Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey 1999
Opportunity for All – extended range of indicators after 1999
Laeken social inclusion indicators – ECHP, EU-SILC
Child Poverty Act Targets 2010

3. UK now very well served
Long fruitful relationship between academia and ONS/DWP
Long time series in
HBAI,
Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Incomes (ETBHI)
Data Archive provides open access to HBAI/FRS, ETBHI, US, MCS etc micro data – unrivalled quality and quantity
Other national surveys have improved coverage of P and D – BHPS/US, MCS
Development of Index of Deprivation and indices for children and elderly – data at small area level. Spatial data much improved.
Eurostat data base and access to EU-SILC micro data.
Fairly regular PSE surveys. See
Progress with future casting.

4. Problems1
IDS not satisfied – Consultation on Child Poverty Measurement.
Timeliness May 2015 election fought with 2012/13 poverty numbers.
Not enough skilled and interested analysts. Failure of social science education.
No adequate sample survey of poverty in Wales.
Really annoying and critical break in EU SILC series for UK – why no back casting?
Child poverty still household poverty – no survey asks children (except The Children Society Good Childhood Surveys). Not even US youth survey or MCS. It makes a difference.
Impact of spending childcare, water, child support, fuel, funerals.

5. Problems 2
Gender lost. More gender breakdowns in HBAI – disability, lone parents
DWP dropped
Opportunities for All,
Tax/benefit model tables
Hiatus over persistent poverty
EU 2020 poverty and social exclusion measure bizarre but it is the only multidimensional poverty measure for whole of the UK
Need for a low income and deprivation measure for all adults and children
Why do we have a pensioners deprivation measure using questions with slightly different wording?
More detail on in-work poverty

6. Challenges Poverty and deprivation increasing.
Failure of statistics to bite in policy.
Not easy to track outcomes (because earlier cohort surveys very bad on P and D data).
Small area estimation techniques could be used to improve ID and be produced for the whole of the UK. ID not comparable.
Costs of P and D clearly huge but not well evidenced.
Youth poverty free zone – lost in household analysis

7. Recommendations Be pleased and proud Be vigilant!
Defend what we have achieved – empirically and conceptually.
Don’t allow poverty and deprivation to be dissipated into (marginal) associations or behaviours.
Or drowned in well-being.
Keep the focus on material resources.