by Peter Goddard
So Ian Duncan Smith busy is developing proposals for new measures for child poverty, to include various social and lifestyle measures.
That sounds sensible enough, but there are some on the left who were quick to disagree. Polly Toynbee was one of them. On the eve of Duncan Smith’s announcement she was doggedly insisting that “the only way to measure a nation’s poverty over time,” she states, “is to count how many fall below the norm, and how far. This international measure counts anyone on less than 60% of a country’s median income.”
As Neil O’Brien points out, though, this “effectively conflates poverty and inequality.”
Needless to say, equality and measures thereof are of vital importance, and much valuable research indicates that equality is a vital national good. But equality is not poverty.
The dictionary (OK, dictionary.com) defines ‘poverty’ as “the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support.”
According to O’Brien’s research, most people share this understanding, “(70pc) think it still means not having enough to eat, or a place to live.”
In fact, almost nobody outside the political classes, when asked to define poverty, will ever use the words ‘median income’.
By confusing relative poverty with absolute poverty, Toynbee and her ilk enable some stirring invective. But it also creates some curious paradoxes.
It is, for example, perfectly feasible for everyone in an economy to improve their income and become visibly better off but, through an increase in inequality, this to result in more people falling poverty.
So by using this measure you can become materially better off whilst simultaneously plunging into poverty. Most would agree this seems counter-intuitive at best, manipulative spin at worst.