As we all know about economics, it’s either in Adam Smith or it’s a footnote. This means that we have to take the concept of relative poverty seriously — we have to talk about linen shirts. If you cannot afford a linen shirt this does not make you poor. However, if you live in a society where not being able to afford a linen shirt is seen as indicating your poverty, being linen-shirtless is a useful definition of poverty by the standards of that society.
That absolute, real poverty of old simply doesn’t exist in the here and now
From this we get to the modern definition of poverty — that relative one. The official definition for the UK is living on less than 60 per cent of median household income, adjusted for household size, measured before or after housing costs to taste. That absolute, real poverty of old simply doesn’t exist in the here and now. There is no one at all — not even the most homeless of scagheads — living on the global definition of under $3 a day in consumption value. That’s a century gone for the UK — more even. Even Barbara Castle admitted, back in 1959, that the real deprivation Labour existed to exorcise from society had gone by then.
That this real poverty — not having anything — has gone is why there has been a change to that definition of relative poverty. For how can we justify the expropriation of the rich, of the capitalists, if the capitalist society has already killed the deprivation that justifies the theft? And, you know, there are quite a number for whom the expropriation is the thing — not the redistribution nor even the poverty.
Polly Toynbee’s claim that Labour finally has a grand strategy about child poverty needs to be seen against this background. We don’t have anyone shoeless, living under a hedge and hoping for seconds of gruel every other day. It’s just not something that exists. This grand plan, these billions to be taken from us for this lifting of the two child cap, they’re about relative poverty. Having less than others, not having nothing. We are, here, talking about the difference between a choice of Air Jordans and the kid down the street having Primark tackies.
It’s in Adam Smith, so it’s real economics that we have to pay attention to. But whether we have to pay as much attention as we do, well. For what is being talked of here is inequality, not poverty. There are simply those who think we must all be more equal. They have hijacked the word poverty because they know it triggers heartstrings, opens wallets. We all have to pay more in taxes to fund these extra benefits in order to make children more equal, not to provide gruel with less water in it.
Now, there are certain problems with this measure of less than 60 per cent of median income. That’s a national number for a start. Yet we all know that parts of the country are cheaper than others — and it’s not just house prices either. By that journalists’ standard of living costs, pints can be £2 and £7 in different parts of the country. Other, less essential things might vary in cost by less than that ratio, but vary they do. One of the things we do not do is vary our “poverty” measure by the cost of living in a place — it’s always by that national median income.
It’s also true that incomes generally rise with age. Households with children in them are generally headed by those younger than the average head of household — just one of those lifecycle truths. So we’d always expect child-containing households to have slightly lower incomes than the general level.
As you might gather, I’m against this whole idea. My general view is that as with the journalists’ breakfast, the gruel of the poor is improved by more water with it.
But move away from my misanthropy and consider the whole child poverty strategy. The aim is to reduce inequality, not to kill off the poverty that no longer exists. A useful proof of this is that there’s another, even worse, form of “poverty” described. This is “deep material poverty”. This, given the rhetoric, we might think is that Dickensian seconds of gruel. But, well, no, it isn’t. You can be suffering this if you don’t get to go to Cub Scouts.
No, no, I kid you not, one of the measures is “Do kids under 6 go to toddler group / nursery / playgroup at least once a week?” OK, perhaps Cubs is in this one: “attend at least one regular organized activity a week outside school, such as sport or a youth group?” As I say, I kid not, there are 22 things which those not in deep material poverty should be able to do and if you cannot do 13 of them you are — and those are two of them. Almost 10 per cent of the measurement is whether you can go to Cubs. This is not poverty, and it’s most certainly not deep material anything. Quite apart from anything else, what’s material about a clean hanky, safety pin and “Dyb, dyb, dyb”?
It’s possible to get all Four Yorkshiremen and start talking about sweet papers on the motorway but another one of the tests — not of poverty but this deep material deprivation — is “a warm bedroom”. Which will come as something of a surprise to anyone of my sexagenarian middle classness — and even in the US, central heating only reached 50 per cent of the population in the 1950s. It only really became common in the UK in the ‘80s. But then as the grandson of a Yorkshireman who really did make it, I would say that sort of thing, wouldn’t I?
The entire we must cure child poverty idea has nothing, at all, to do with curing poverty. For we’ve already done that. It’s about making us more equal. This is a valid choice, just as much as any other ethical choice. But how keen are you to have more tax extracted so that we are, simply, more equal?
Another of those markers of that deep material poverty: “Do you have home contents insurance?” Seriously, we’re all so damn rich that we’ve got to pay benefits to cover the scrotes trying to steal our stuff. “Everyone in your household [has] use of a computer or tablet for work, education or accessing services?” Whut? Poverty is not being able to afford the insurance on your computers? Oh, and “Do you have reliable access to the internet at home?” Those three, those three alone, are 14 per cent of the definition of this deep deprivation.
We are a bit beyond the linen shirt here — even, possibly, too far beyond it. To the point that perhaps us general public wouldn’t be wholly happy on the idea of being taxed so that folk can afford the insurance premiums on their iPads so they can check on the time Cubs starts?
I agree we owe others who have done badly through that veil of ignorance. But, you know, how much, eh?
