I know we have covered this before but since the government and the BBC keep banging on about “eradicating child poverty” in the UK, when we all know that there is NO child poverty in the UK, it seems appropriate to question why the BBC nevers allow a discussion on the precise nature of “relative poverty” which is a leftist scam. I caught a discussion on the Today programme early this morning on this and whilst the BBC interviewer did explain that in fact what we were discussing is relative poverty, there was no voice to point out the stunning stupidity of the concept in the first place! Gordon Brown may be moving to enshrine the removal of “child poverty”by 2020 in law, this is in fact fantasy politics. My point is that so often the BBC chooses to accept what are left-wing shibboleths as in relative child poverty and then debates around them, rather than allowing debate on their validity in the first place. That’s how nonsense such as child poverty becomes part of the political agenda and stays part of it. That’s how the child poverty industry prospers.
I have wondered for a while how Gordon Brown can eradicate child poverty by 2010 if relative poverty is a “relative” measure. I cannot ask the question, as I do not have access to our rulers, but I would have thought that the question might have crossed the “minds” of the great BBC star political journalists.
DV,
By the beeboid definition, all of my employees would be considered to be in poverty, and yet locally in the West Country, they are considered to have good jobs – same old selective, same old !
A classic beeboid mis-information day on Toady this morning. A fluffy lite nulab mp, saying how everyone in Parliament loves cuddly speaker martin and its all the horrid Tories fault. Then, roll of drums, gordo pulls another rabbit out of the hat on mortgage interest relief for people who loose their jobs – except other news channels reporting banks furious , as they knew nothing about it !
NotaSheep | Homepage | 04.12.08 – 8:16 am
Actually it is perfectly possible to eradicate child poverty even though it is a relative concept.
Relative poverty is defined as living in a household with an income less than 60% of median income.
Median income is that level of income ‘X’ where there are as many earning more than X as there are earning less than ‘X’.
If everyone in the land earning less than the median actually earned more than 70% of it, the median wouldn’t shift one jot (there would still be the same number above as below the line), but there would be no relative poverty, as everyone would have an income higher than 60% of the median.
The question isn’t so much whether it is possible, but whether it is desirable.
In practice, it means a lone parent living on benefit earns only a little bit less than a lone parent with a job at a supermarket checkout.
Do we need to preserve the differential as an incentive?
That’s what society needs to weigh.
Same with Global Warming. Let’s have a 950% reduction in our carbon emissions eh? Why not, it still wouldn’t equal one day of the Chinese’ output but fantasy politics shouldn’t stop Nu Liars and their shills al-beeb destroying this country’s economic infrastructure.
The thing is, this country DOES need a poor group. Not a relatively poor group, but a REAL poor group…because thats the only way prices will stay down.
Look at Singapore, one of the most prosperous cities in the world YET the only reason it doesnt cost an absolute bomb to live, work and play there (like it does in every single Western city), is because of the very poor that also live there (in peace I might add as well).
Mailman
Surely in Gordon Brown’s “Global Vision”, poverty should be measured on a global basis, in which case there are no poor children in the UK ? To describe any UK child as poor is an insult to really poor children and demonstrates the sheer heartlessness of the left, fully supported by the BBC, of course.
Perhaps Gordo should resign and thereby reduce the relative stupidity of our leaders.
“That’s how nonsense such as child poverty becomes part of the political agenda and stays part of it. That’s how the child poverty industry prospers.”
In the days when we had Real Conservatives, Tory politicians regularly made the points you did. And we’re not talking that long ago either.
Till we get a return to impartiality on the BBC, David Cameron needs to declare ‘hostile interviewers’ in the sense judges can declare ‘hostile witnesses’ in Court. Any interviewer promulgating left wing nostrums as fact, as you’ve expounded here, should be on that list. Of course, its not going to happen though. Things … can only get worse.
So far as I can see from the stats online, a child would be described as living in poverty if he/she lived in a household with an income (from all sources including benefits) of less than £11K per annum.
Problem is the minimum wage (assuming a 40 hour week) only brings in about £11.9K. On an EUish 35 hr week, even less.
If we could create a society where everyone earned a dollar a day and was on the brink of starvation, child poverty as defined by Zanulab would be non-existent since no one would be earning less than 60% of the median.
A child in Africa without food is suffering from poverty. We all know what poverty is by the normal definition of the word rather than a socialist’s definition.
Even the poorest child in Britain has cleaner water, cleaner food, fewer diseases to catch, better healthcare, finer clothes (none darned) than the King of England’s children had a few hundred years ago, thanks to capitalism.
The ultimate communist definition of ‘no poverty’ is as follows: nobody less than the median and nobody more than the median, and this is achieved when everyone is at the median.
There is just one drawback of this system when put into practice, which is the median becomes pretty low.
From a stastistical point of view, the distribution graph showing a lot of poverty is like a hill that gently rises at both sides; so the richest is a long way from the poorest. The graph where there is little poverty is like a very steep anthill that shoots straight up, ie everyone is close to the median.
The BBC’s concept of poverty as descibed by their graphs can be applied to Zimbabwe now compared with Zimbabwe before independence. There is probably no child poverty in Zimbabwe now because everyone is so close to the median. But before independence there were people at one end who owned large farms, and people at the other end who owned nothing but worked on the farms and had jobs, food, housing, education, health care, money, and the ability to save up and buy their own farm. But that was when there was a lot more poverty according the the BBC’s graphs.
As other contributors above have said, the BBC is being deceitful with the figures – they do not look at actual real wealth they just look at relative wealth.
To be fair – Today did its best. It hauled on Chris Grayling the Conservative front bench spokesman on work and pensions who – surprise surprise – thought that more should be done to combat child (non-)poverty. He made Lisa Harker – speaking for the (non-disclosed left wing) think tank IPPR – look moderate. If this is what we can look forward to from a Conservative government, then I suspect on the day after Cameron enters No 10 he will announce an increase in the BBC licence fee rather than its abolition.
Umbongo | 04.12.08 – 11:12 am |
There’s nothing wrong with a Conservative wanting to relieve poverty.
There’s a fine tradition of doing so running from Disraeli to IDS.
PaulS
There’s nothing wrong in anybody seeking to relieve real poverty. However, absolute child “poverty” in the UK hardly exists. The government’s policy is aimed at relieving “relative” not absolute poverty. By definition “relative” poverty cannot be cured unless we all have the same income: a target for Labour and, apparently, for the Conservatives (in name only) also.
Umbongo | 04.12.08 – 11:30 am
“relative” poverty cannot be cured unless we all have the same income
Really, Umbongo, that is complete tosh. Tom has explained pretty clearly what relative poverty is in his comment higher up this thread.
Getting rid of relative poverty could be achieved by, for instance, setting the benefits floor at 61% of median income.
As Tom says in his later comment, that would mean giving any family with children around eleven grand in total.
caveman | 04.12.08 – 10:28 am
Of course ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ are relative, or comparative, terms.
Saying we shouldn’t use the word ‘poor’ to describe anyone in England because no-one here is as poor as an African in a mud hut is as silly as saying we can’t say anyone in England is rich because there’s no-one as rich as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
PaulS, I think you need to get your head around the implications of the maths a little more.
PaulS
I must admit I hadn’t read Tom’s comment as diligently as I could have. However – and, yes, I’m gently shifting the goalposts here – the measure of poverty (ie household income) is probably the wrong one anyway. Quoting a suggestion from this post it’s probable that even relative poverty is overstated:
“calculating child poverty rates solely on the basis of net disposable household income, and ignoring the value of “free at the point of use” healthcare and schooling, the government is overstating the extent of the problem. This is because the value of such publicly provided services compared to net disposable household income is higher for poorer families.
For a numerical example, suppose that median net disposable household income is £1000 per month. Then a family with household income of £599 per month is poor, according to the measure used by the government.
Now suppose that the value of healthcare and schooling is £200 per month for each family. Then the total expenditure for each family is £1200 and £799, respectively. Now, £799 is greater than 66% of £1200; hence the family is not poor, according to this more inclusive measure. Clearly, fewer families will be classified as poor, by this definition.”
The Conservatives could do themselves – and us – a favour by adding similarly imaginative contributions to the debate. Even so, on the existing (income) basis – and the suggested (expenditure) basis above – I still maintain that absolute child poverty in the UK hardly exists.
Nick | 04.12.08 – 12:17 pm
PaulS, I think you need to get your head around the implications of the maths a little more.
No, Nick, I understand the implications of the maths perfectly well.
You may be in need of a quick illustrative example, however.
Take a country with 1000 households where 500 have an income between £20,000 and £5,000,000, and 500 have incomes between £1000 and £20,000.
The median income would be twenty thousand.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the 500 earning between £1000 and £20,000.
If all but one of them was earning > £12,000, then only one person would be in relative poverty. Giving that person £11,001 would eradicate relative poverty in that country.
The fact that every single person below the median income would now have an income of > 60% of the median, wouldn’t alter the median. Got it?
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Umbongo
Yes, your point on an expenditure calculation is a good one. The other thing to bear in mind when lefties bang on about ‘inequality’ of incomes is that middle class people pay for their homes, children’s schooling, even university costs for their adult children and often health insurance, while poorer people get all these free.
There are other anomalies to do with relative poverty calculations • for instance a bloke at the IEA once looked at relative poverty in Austria and Hungary. On the 60% of national median income basis, each country considered separately had relative poverty of around 10% (I think) but if you were to re-unite Austia-Hungary into one nation, then 80% of Hungarians would be poor, but not a single Austrian.
All this shows though is that relative poverty is…..relative. And relative to one’s fellow countrymen, not foreigners. That doesn’t mean it’s a useless concept.
I think it is quite useful to have a measure of how much poorer the very poorest are than the typical.
PaulS | 04.12.08 – 12:55 pm |
My problem with your plan to fix benefits at 61% of median (or at any fixed percentage, if I’m honest), is that if the median rises for any reason (a tech boom, a new industry success story, or other manifestations of wealth creation), then the median goes up, and those on benefits get a raise for no reason whatsoever, other than as some sort of “fairness” punishment to those who actually worked for that wealth.
You’d be better off pinning benefits to cost of living indexes or something, although that would have a ton of problems as well.
I don’t think it’s helpful aying that there’s no such thing as child poverty, since there obviously are children living in Britain who don’t get enough healthful food to eat. Then again – using a relative definition – compared to the streets of Calcutta or the shanty towns of Rio, there is no such thing as child poverty in the UK.
But median income is a really, really bad way to define who truly needs help. Of course, if the actual goal is to make sure nobody has too much in comparison to those at the bottom, rather than actually helping those in need…..
PaulS: what David Preiser said. And ‘median’ does not equal ‘typical’ – you are assuming you know what the distribution curve looks like.
umbongo : “relative” poverty cannot be cured unless we all have the same income
PaulS : Really, Umbongo, that is complete tosh. Tom has explained pretty clearly what relative poverty is in his comment higher up this thread.
No, Umbongo is quite right. Relative poverty is uneradicable. Relative poverty means, as an English expression, anyone being poorer than anyone else. It is simply the government’s definition of relative poverty – the sixty percent thing – that allows the mathematical possibility of its elimination.
Once we’ve got clear that for political purposes relative poverty is entirely a matter of definition, it becomes easy to eliminate it – by definition. As Umbongo says, the numbers change significantly if you include the value of state provided benefits in income. But you can also change the 60%. How about 50% or 40% ?
The BBC bias problem is that on the rare occasions they invite someone from the right to discuss the question, they invite a Conservative politician, who naturally wants to ooze his way into favour with centrist listeners. the left doesn’t have this sort of problem, since the BBC is happy to invite pundits who express a view to the left of the Labour spokesman. The country is knee deep in lefty pundits who are kept from starving by some source of taxpayer funding or another. Labour spokesmen, like Tory ones, generally express views more centrist than they ones they really hold.
I did once hear Stuart Sexton, who holds old fashioned right wing views on education, on the Today programme, and Jim naughtie was absolutely startled to discover that there were views far to the right of what the Conservative spokesman is willing to admit to. (Although on reflection this is not quite fair to the current Tory education spokesman, who does seem to have some genuinely non centrist views.)
Anyway, what is required is more right wing pundits – not politicians, who are always trying to curry favour with centrist voters – to be invited onto BBC shows.
David Preiser (USA) | Homepage | 04.12.08 – 1:19 pm
My problem with your plan to fix benefits at 61% of median
I wasn’t proposing this a sensible plan as such – I merely used it as an example of how a society so minded could eradicate relative poverty without (as Umbongo suggested) equalizing all incomes and of why relative poverty isn’t the ‘stunningly stupid’ concept David Vance says it is in his post.
the median goes up, and those on benefits get a raise for no reason whatsoever, other than as some sort of “fairness” punishment
you have a point, but remember we are talking about child poverty here and the children of the poor are not necessarily any more feckless, idle or undeserving than the children of the rich.
You use the phrase ‘fairness punishment’. Others might talk of ‘rising tides that raise all boats’ or ‘everyone sharing in the proceeds of progress’. Depends which way you spin it. 🙂
Lee Moore | 04.12.08 – 2:29 pm
what is required is more right wing pundits – not politicians, who are always trying to curry favour with centrist voters – to be invited onto BBC shows
Well said.
PaulS | 04.12.08 – 2:31 pm |
use the phrase ‘fairness punishment’. Others might talk of ‘rising tides that raise all boats’ or ‘everyone sharing in the proceeds of progress’. Depends which way you spin it.
Except you’re not talking about a rising tide at all, are you? The tide isn’t rising in this case. More like forcing people with bigger boats to get smaller ones, and giving bigger boats to other people.
As for this “sharing” business, that’s a joke. No matter how you spin it, those on benefits are already “sharing” the success of others. When they can afford loads of cigarettes, nice TVs and game consoles, nutritional food at supermarkets, and have convenient access to extremely cheap booze, they are “sharing” the benefits of a wealthy, successful society. The only question some people want to ask is “How much more can they share?”
PaulS
“…we are talking about child poverty here and the children of the poor are not necessarily any more feckless, idle or undeserving than the children of the rich.”
True, but the parents of the children of the poor are; and they will consider the benefits they receive as a reward for fecklessness or idleness, thus more of their peers will be tempted to emulate them, and more children will grow up only a little above the line of relative poverty.
“You use the phrase ‘fairness punishment’. Others might talk of ‘rising tides that raise all boats’ or ‘everyone sharing in the proceeds of progress’. Depends which way you spin it.”
I prefer “fairness punishment” because it has the charm of honesty. The other eumphemisms you quote imply that being taxed to provide a certain standard of living for someone else is something I would want to do. I prefer to work and provide for my family, knowing there is a very basic safety net in case I need it but that, if I want more, I had better plan and insure for myself.
If I earn 120% of the median, exactly why might I want to get out of bed on a cold morning to go to work (away from my family) when I could get an acceptable lifestyle without leaving the house. I read an article a while ago (print media, no link) that said the Swedes were having to come to terms with the problem that their generous welfare system was eroding their work ethic. If we were honest we would admit we had this problem a generation ago and did nothing, and the problem is still growing.
David Preiser
Except you’re not talking about a rising tide at all, are you? The tide isn’t rising in this case. More like forcing people with bigger boats to get smaller ones, and giving bigger boats to other people.
Your example was something like a tech boom that raised median incomes – that’s a rising tide scenario, surely?
Instead of pretending there are no little children living in squalor and poverty in the UK, and instead of being all hard-hearted about the ones that indubitably are, I wish big-C Conservatives and small-c conservatives here would unite and address the real issues to do with NuLab’s approach to relative poverty and the BBC’s biased reporting of it.
The true scandal is that all NuLab has done in the past eleven years has been to move a number of households with children from just under the 60% of median income line, to just over it.
For performing this pathetically simple trick they get rapturous applause from the beeboids who crow how Gordon Brown has ‘lifted’ half a million or whatever out of child poverty.
What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that the really, truly very poor – those who were on only say 40% of MI, are now actually poorer. They’ve done worde since Labour got in.
That’s the scandal and that’s the outrage.
A Conservative government would have helped the most needy first. Labour’s priority has been to help those easiest to help so as to make the stats most impressive.
PaulS | 04.12.08 – 3:25 pm |
Instead of pretending there are no little children living in squalor and poverty in the UK, and instead of being all hard-hearted about the ones that indubitably are, I wish big-C Conservatives and small-c conservatives here would unite and address the real issues to do with NuLab’s approach to relative poverty and the BBC’s biased reporting of it.
Can’t argue with that.
I don’t think it’s helpful aying that there’s no such thing as child poverty, since there obviously are children living in Britain who don’t get enough healthful food to eat.
I appreciate this is getting a bit OT but eating well is very cheap – much cheaper than eating badly. Lidl will sell you half a ton of veg for about 50p. People are lazy and ignorant. They feed themselves and their offspring garbage. That’s different.
We could digress into the contradictory statement of “poor smokers” but let’s not.
If you define poverty by the distribution graph you have to display one in a programme about child poverty and explain the graph. Basically tall and thin is lower poverty (by the current definition) and low and wide is high poverty. When you turn this into 60% from the median, it is just a way of defining the shape of the graph, but condensed into one number for the sake of convenience. Otherwise you would have to keep drawing the curve.
David Preiser gives a good example when he mentions his tech boom example.
Here is another example to add to that one: suppose there were 100 millionaires living on an island such as Jersey. If a teacher arrives on the island, they will be quite a long way below the median income, so the teacher will be defined as ‘in poverty’.
The teacher leaves and poverty has gone. Nobody is in poverty.
Bill Gates arrives with his bags of money. The median takes a huge leap to the right, and the consequence is that all the millionaires are now defined as living in poverty.
I am not saying nobody is poor, for example old people who cannot afford heating are poor. But using the 60% figure the authorities are including amongst the poor some people who have 60″ tv screens, rent paid, rates paid, booze, fags hoidays etc.
Hugh Oxford | 04.12.08 – 10:08 pm |
Yes, fair point.
There is no such thing as ‘chid poverty’ in the UK. There is, however, plenty of child abuse, which often displays symptoms of ‘child poverty’.
Anyone remember Jamie Oliver questioning schoolchildren about what they had for supper the evening before? “Pot noodle, sir”.
certainly none in the benefits class. even prezza thinks they are spoilt
The chavvy “mother” of Shannon Matthews was on 20,800 a year tax free, with housing paid for by the clouncil. She has flat screen telly, SKY channels and spends most of her money on booze and fags. Yet according to the bleeding heart liberals she’s living in poverty!
JohnW | 05.12.08 – 3:32 am
Shannon Matthews was on 20,800 a year ….. Yet according to the bleeding heart liberals she’s living in poverty!
No she isn’t.
If she’s on £20,800 she’s not in poverty; in fact, she’s well above the median, which is between 18 and 19 thou.
Tom: re S Mathew’s mother not being in poverty.
No she is not in poverty by the child poverty definition but I think the point JohnW might have been making is that the BBC has given us the impression over the years that her type are poor.
Can you seriously imagine the BBC saying she gets too much benefit? (For a start she has more disposable income than I do, and I work 6 days a week and live in a council estate).
Has the BBC ever put anyone on who said that benefit payments for people like her are too high and are encouraging the underclass to have too many children?
Have they ever allowed anyone on who says the underclass should be discouraged from having more children paid for by everyone else, and not encouraged to do so?
The amount of benefits these types get is starting to be revealed in the TV media, but it is never presented as: ‘Scandal; why are benefits so high for the underclass?’
The information tends to come out in other programmes a bit at a time. For example, on Wife Swap one couple who both worked earned less than the other couple who did not work.
The government are trying to breed Labour voters. They must be so annoyed when these types get so chavvy they don’t even bother to vote.
‘The ingratitude! We give you £30,000 benefits and all you have to do is get your ar**** into the polling station once every five years! What more do we have to do for you?’
Well, how about some sort of lottery system whereby everyone who votes gets entered for a prize? That should get them out of bed.
I gave up on social statistics when I worked out half the population was of below average intelligence. Mathmetically it’s correct but conflicts with experience, that says it’s far more.
ASL
It is mathmatically possible that more than half the population is of below average intelligence; it all depends on the distribution of intelligence across the population. If there is a large group in the range 85 – 100 and a smaller group more widely distributed from about 125 to 160+ the average can still be 100 but more than half the population can score below that average (put simply, two at 85 plus one at 130 have an average of 100, but two are below and only one above).
I would like to think it is possible there is a limit to how stupid people can get and still survive but I am probably wrong about that. You can either look at the annual Darwin awards or reflect on a favourite phrase of mine – “How did you get to be so damned old and so damned ugly when you are so damned STOOPID?”
There are three ways to find the average:
-mean (total/number)
-mode (most frequent)
-median (form a queue, average is the middle of the queue)
With a ‘perfect’ distribution, the three methods all give the same answer for the value of the average.
If you are weighing elephants the median is easier than the mean (you only weigh one)
So if you use the median definition for the average, then by the definition, exactly half are greater and half are smaller.
Pedant
Fair point, but in common usage the term “average” is usually taken to be the arithmetic mean. I have had on occasion, to use the geometric mean (nth root of the product of n results)for certain populations, but that is applicable to such rare circumstances I ignored it for this case.
MarkE
yes, people do generally use the average as you describe. I was just feeling a bit pedantic.
In truth the only way to obtain this elimination of relative child poverty according to the parameter is Cuban type communism, perhaps those that set the goal have that in mind.
I would fight that with every breath in my body.
Actual child poverty and relative child poverty have next to nothing in common.
The poorest children here cannot be in child poverty compared to say almost every child in the likes of Haiti or Malawi.
Poverty is being without the necessities for life not whether your family can afford a playstation.
Melanie K: I think you are correct and so is HowlinWilf above; we have child neglect, not poverty in the uk. Nobody has to sew up holes in socks these days, or cut sheets down the middle, reverse them and sew them up again to make the unworn part the new middle. You can buy a coat in a charity shop for a pound.
As caveman says above, using the relative poverty method, they do not have any child poverty in Cuba or Zimbabwe because everyone is clustered close the the median, albeit a very low one.
Meanwhile, in Jersey, which is full of millionaires, someone on a teacher’s salary could be so far from the median as to be classified as in poverty. The relative method is ridiculous and only committed socialists can think it is valid.