Hello freemink-ga,
An article in the Guardian, July 12, 2000 looks at a report comparing
16,000 people born in single weeks in 1958 and 1970, looking at their
education, opportunities and social backgrounds. The conclusion is
that: “The opportunities gap between those from different social
backgrounds was no different from those born in 1970 than it was for
children born in 1958… in some cases “"the detrimental effects of
inequality of opportunity are actually growing stronger and more
debilitating.” The impact of class on qualifications was just as great
for the 1970 generation as for the 1958.
(www.guardian.co.uk/welfare/article/ 0,2763,342494,00.html)
The Habitat UK 2001 report from the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister (http://www.planning.odpm.gov.uk/habitat/03.htm) found that
“Average incomes nearly doubled between 1970 and 1998. In 1998 in
Great Britain the average weekly income for full time work was £427.1
for men and £309.6 for women, whereas in Scotland it was £394.6 for
men and £276.7 for women. But at the same time the proportion of
people living on incomes that are less than half the contemporary
average rose from 9% in 1970 to 19% in 1997. In Scotland 25% of the
population were living in households with below half the average
income of Britain in 1996/97”
The Literacy Trust web site at
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/database/measure.html provides a
number of quotations from articles about poverty trends
For example, only last year it was estabished that: “Nearly one in 10
Britons has experienced conditions of "absolute poverty" without basic
human necessities such as enough food, safe drinking water and proper
sanitation according to a report from Bristol and London University.”
(Independent, 9 March, 2001)
Another example shows that the lack of progress does not refer just to
the last couple of decades: “A unique study of London's social
geography, published at the end of December 2000, reveals that 100
years of policy initiatives have failed to shift the boundaries that
divide the rich from the poor, or to close the gap between them. By
comparing modern London with "maps" of poverty made in the city more
that a century ago, researchers from the universities of Leeds,
Bristol and Cardiff have demonstrated the extent to which the
divisions between London's social classes have remained rigid.”
(Independent 22 December, 2000)
“Data released by the Department of Social Security in July 2000
revealed that between 1997 and 1999 the number of people living in
households on less than half average income rose from 16.9% to 17.7%,
as the incomes of the rich grew three times as rapidly as those of the
poor. The number of pensioners living below the poverty line rose from
2 million to 2.4 million - accounting for 80% of the increase. Thus a
widening gap between the rich and the poor pushed 500,000 more people
below the poverty line in Labour's first two years of office. The
DSS's figures showed an increase in children living in poverty from 3
million to 3.4 million in Labour's first year in office.” This is a
comment from the Literacy Trust based on findings in the report
Opportunity for All, Tackling Poverty and Social Exclusion, which can
be downloaded from the Department of Social Security Website
http://www.dss.gov.uk/publications/dss/1999/poverty/index.htm
The Literacy Trust site also has some comparisons between 1979 and
1998: “A TES report on 31 January 1997, uses the European Community
benchmark of poverty (in the absence of an official UK one). Relative
poverty can then be measured in terms of one half of the national mean
household income. 'By this yardstick, one in 10 British children, or
1.4 million, were living in poverty in 1979. As of 1993-4, the latest
year for which figures were then available, the numbers had risen to
4.2 million children, or one in three. In Northern Ireland, the
proportion is nearly 40%.' Excluded from these figures are the 200,000
children who are members of homeless families (a category that grew by
250% from 1978 to 1990). Neither do they include older teenagers
living on the streets or asylum-seekers.”
I think that these figures already provide an answer to your question,
which is that there has been no real progress on poverty issues in the
last 30 years, and if anything the situation is getting worse
according to some measures. However, if you want further information,
there are many more such facts available on the Literacy Trust site:
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/database/measure.html
Search strategy
I searched on Goole: poverty, UK, 1970
(://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=poverty+UK+1970) |
