|In my essay I will write about poverty, inequality and causes of poverty. Also I will add some statistic about poverty in UK. |
|It is not easy to say what poverty exactly means (Sociology and Scotland, 2003 p.178). Poverty can be defined by many different ways|
|e.g. on the basic on income. Generally poverty can be seen as the economic and sociological concept which describes the lack of |
|sufficient financial means to meet the needs of the individual, in particular in the field of food, shelter, clothing, |
|transportation and basic cultural and social needs. |
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|We can distinguish two types of poverty: absolute and relative poverty. |
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|Absolute poverty is defined as the lack of sufficient resources with which to keep body and soul together e.g. people are not able |
|to feed themselves and it is based of basic needs for survival or a subsistence level. |
|Relative poverty is agreed European way of measuring poverty. (Sociology and Scotland, 2003 p.183). Relative poverty measures the |
|extent to which a household's financial resources falls below an average income threshold for the economy. Also relative poverty |
|depends on the standard of living in a society and compare ‘poor’ to the rest of society e.g. someone can be poor because do not |
|have access to internet. However both can be based on assessment. (McKendrick 2011) |
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|Inequality can be viewed within an economic context, such as the widening gulf between rich and poor, issues such as power, social |
|class, gender and the life chances. If poverty is restricted to an economic context, then the main focus becomes the link between |
|inequality to, wealth and income. The relationships between poverty and inequality we can see e.g. in gender inequality. During many|
|years the men were the breadwinner and the women stays at home looks after children, clean and cook but over the years situation |
|changed. Women often working part time or low paid jobs also they are less likely to be selected for promotion because they have |
|e.g. child responsibilities e.g. maternity leave for 9 months and managerial are not seen as a woman’s position. If women is alone |
|parent has poor income or reliant on benefits that she is not able to afford the basic needs such as bills, food, transport or |
|appropriate living conditions. In UK more women live in poverty than men. (Poverty in Scotland, 2011, John H McKendrick p. 101) |
|The relationships between poverty and inequality we can see also in class. Inequality by class was identifying by Marxism. We can |
|recognise eight classes in UK. Higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations which include large employers and |
|higher managerial and administrative occupations and higher professional occupations. Lower managerial, administrative and |
|professional occupations, intermediate occupations, small employers and own account workers, lower supervisory and technical |
|occupations, semi-routine occupations, routine occupations, never worked and long-term unemployed. |
|(http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/classifications/current-standard-classifications/soc2010/soc2010-volume-3-ns-sec--rebased-on|
|-soc2010--user-manual/index.html).