Poverty

Not many folk are aware of it, but there is an official riots inquiry and it has delivered its interim report today. Its conclusions are pretty clichéd and not really worth studying; David Lammy’s book is infinitely more instructive and readable. But it does produce a few figures about the rioters — or, I should say, those arrested mainly because they didn’t think to cover their face. I looked at this for my Telegraph column last week. Here’s my summary of today’s report:   1. Broken Britain. Some 46 per cent of those arrested live in the lowest ‘decile’. These guys are not working class, but welfare class. Abandoned by

This morning, Fraser published a piece criticising the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ definition of poverty. Here is a counterpunch from Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is the organisation that funds the IFS. This article is the latest post in our Right to Reply series.  Do we really need another debate about the usefulness of a poverty measure? Of course, no definition is perfect. One of the hardy perennials of the poverty debate is the question of measurement. I wonder what it says about us as a country: why do we spend so much effort thinking about definitions of poverty, and so little responding to the

CoffeeHousers have been generous in their response to my post on the need for an inquiry. I thought I’d respond in a post, rather than the comments. 1) Why rush to think that poverty is the problem? Rhoda Klapp raises this very good point. In 1996, American academics looked at various riots round the world since the war – I’d urge CoffeeHousers with a serious interest to read the report here). They found “little evidence that poverty in the community matters” – ie, there are much poorer cities, where people don’t riot. Other factors matter, mainly risk versus reward. I used this study as when writing the leader for this

Yesterday, Andrew Mitchell was the toast of the broadcasters. They have turned on him to an extent today. The news that portions of the £52.25 million given in emergency aid to the starving masses in the Horn of Africa will be distributed in areas controlled by al-Shabaab has forced Mitchell onto the defensive. “We shall have no dealings with al-Shabaab,” he said, and then added that the aid will reach its intended recipients by means other than collusion with the jihadists. This is an embarrassing moment for Mitchell and, of course, it is vital that money and supplies do not fall into the hands of well-fed fighters. However, it is

There is no rest for IDS. Yesterday he was in Madrid talking about youth unemployment and immigration and today he turns his attention to child poverty. Of all life’s accidents, the accident of birth is the most decisive. It is said that a child’s prospects are determined by the age of five, and numerous other statistics and factoids lead to a similar conclusion. IDS rehearses some in a piece in today’s Guardian. IDS and Labour MP Graham Allen have conducted a report into these matters, and have concluded that early intervention in a child from a deprived or broken family is vital if the poverty gap is to be closed,

Here’s a question for you: should free school meals (FSM) be given to all pupils, regardless of their parents’ income? I ask because this is precisely what the Labour-led council of Southwark is proposing for its primary schools. As the Evening Standard reports, the councilmen’s thinking is that by giving “healthy” FSMs to every pupil, every day, they might help “reduce childhood obesity.” Oh, and the measure will cost some £4 million a year. Even if we put aside the question of whether the local praetorians should — or even could — tackle obesity on behalf of middle-class parents, this is still needling stuff. Southwark council has to find savings

With all the talk about social mobility, it was inevitable that those who believe grammar schools were the doorway to opportunity would wade into the debate. The most prominent of these interventions came yesterday from David Davis, who said: “The hard data shows that the post-war improvement in social mobility, and its subsequent decline, coincided exactly with the arrival, and then the destruction, of the grammar school system. This is the clearest example of the unintended consequence of a purportedly egalitarian policy we have seen in modern times.” The “hard data” Davis refers to is this 2005 study by Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin for the LSE and the Sutton Trust.

The government’s new report into social mobility is, it tells us, all about “opening doors” and “breaking barriers” — but it’s probably taxing attention spans too. 89 pages of text and graphs, offset by the same pea soup shade of green that’s used for all these coalition documents. To save you from wading through it all, here’s our quick five-point summary: 1) The same story… Much of the report, as James suggested earlier, is familiar territory. After all, the coalition’s two most developed policy areas — welfare and education — are precisely designed to improve opportunities for the least well-off; so here they are again, restated and slightly reframed. The

What’s the point of Davos? This is a question seldom addressed in the reports filed from the five-day “World Economic Forum” which ended on Sunday. Many speeches are made, many issues debated, but it is not a place where decisions are taken. It is not a G20. Manifestos are not launched there. It exists to serve a very particular function: every year for a short period of time it becomes the temporary capital of the globalised world. Top business and political leaders, distinguished academics and journalists – all committed to improving the state of the world – flock there to meet each other, swap ideas and then go home. This

What is ‘poverty’? It might sound a basic question but, when we hear about x percent of people ‘living in poverty’, what does that actually mean? The policy review conducted by Frank Field last year offered a number of insights into the issues of life chances and their determinants. But it failed to address that fundamental question: what is poverty? Until we know what we are measuring, it is impossible to attempt to tackle it. Poverty continues to preoccupy us. According to the British Social Attitude Survey, the majority view is that there is “quite a lot” of poverty in Britain today, and many expect it to increase over the