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Poverty seems, at first glance, an obvious thing to identify: surely we know it when we see it. Yet how a society defines poverty is one of the most politically charged decisions in social policy, because the definition determines who counts as poor, how many poor people there are, and therefore what governments are expected to do about it. Set the poverty line low enough and the problem appears small; conceive of poverty more generously and it becomes a mass condition demanding redistribution. Sociologists have therefore spent more than a century arguing not only about how to measure poverty but about what poverty fundamentally is. This lesson establishes the conceptual toolkit — absolute versus relative definitions, the consensual approach, and the broader idea of social exclusion — that underpins the entire Work, Poverty and Welfare option.
Key Definition: Poverty is a state of deprivation in which individuals or households lack the resources to meet needs that are considered essential. Whether those "needs" are defined as bare physical survival or as full participation in society is the central dividing line in the sociology of poverty.
This lesson addresses the foundational specification content for the Work, Poverty and Welfare option:
Paper 2 is a single essay paper (2 hours, 80 marks across two options). In the Work, Poverty and Welfare option you answer one 10-mark "applying material from the Item, analyse two…" question and one 20-mark "applying material from the Item, evaluate…" essay. Note: Paper 2 essays are worth 20 marks, not 30 — only Paper 1 and Paper 3 carry the longer essays.
The AQA specification rewards candidates who connect material across the course. The definition and measurement of poverty links to:
The earliest scientific attempt to define and measure poverty was made by Seebohm Rowntree in his study of York, first conducted in 1899 (Poverty: A Study of Town Life, 1901). Rowntree developed the concept of absolute poverty: a condition in which people lack the resources to maintain physical health and efficiency.
Rowntree's method was meticulous and deliberately objective:
Rowntree's central claim is that absolute poverty is universal and unchanging in principle: the human body's nutritional needs are the same in any society and any era, so a subsistence standard can in theory be applied anywhere. He repeated his York study in 1936 and 1950, allowing him to track change over time — a pioneering longitudinal design.
Exam Tip: Rowntree is the anchor name for absolute poverty. Always note the strength of his approach — it produces an objective, comparable, measurable threshold — before turning to the relativist critique.
Strengths:
Criticisms:
The decisive challenge to the absolute approach came from Peter Townsend, whose monumental study Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) reframed poverty as a relative condition. For Townsend, poverty must be defined in relation to the living standards that are normal and customary in a particular society at a particular time.
Townsend argued that individuals are in poverty when "they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong."
Crucially, Townsend went beyond simply drawing a relative income line. He developed a deprivation index — a list of items and activities considered normal in British society (for example, having a cooked meal most days, possessing a refrigerator, having had a holiday away from home in the last year, being able to invite friends round). Households lacking several of these were judged to be deprived. Townsend then argued there was an income threshold below which deprivation rose sharply — a point at which households were effectively excluded from the normal life of society.
This produces a profound shift: poverty is no longer about the body's survival but about participation in society. As average living standards rise, so does the poverty line. Poverty, in this view, can never simply be "abolished" by economic growth if inequality persists, because the standard against which deprivation is judged rises with the society as a whole.
| Feature | Absolute (Rowntree) | Relative (Townsend) |
|---|---|---|
| What poverty is | Inability to meet basic physical survival needs | Inability to meet the living standards customary in one's society |
| Fixed or moving line? | Fixed subsistence standard, in principle universal | Moves upward as average living standards rise |
| Strength | Objective, comparable, measurable | Captures social participation and the lived reality of inequality |
| Weakness | Understates hardship in rich societies; "needs" still vary | Risks conflating poverty with inequality; index items are value-judgements |
| Political implication | Poverty can be "solved" by lifting people above subsistence | Poverty persists wherever inequality persists; demands redistribution |
Strengths:
Criticisms:
A major response to the criticism that the deprivation index reflects sociologists' own values came from Joanna Mack and Stewart Lansley in their Poor Britain study (1985), associated with the Breadline Britain television series. Their innovation was the consensual approach.
Rather than the researcher deciding what counts as a necessity, Mack and Lansley surveyed the public to establish a democratic, consensual list of items and activities that a majority regarded as essential — things "no one should have to do without." A household was then defined as poor if it could not afford three or more of these socially-perceived necessities through enforced lack (distinguishing genuine inability to afford from voluntary choice).
This approach has several attractions:
Exam Tip: Mack and Lansley are the bridge between the absolute and relative camps. Their consensual method keeps the relativist insight (necessities are socially defined and change over time) while answering the charge that relative poverty is just the sociologist's value-judgement.
Strengths:
Criticisms:
The most recent development broadens the lens still further. The concept of social exclusion — strongly associated in UK debate with the New Labour government's Social Exclusion Unit (established 1997) and analysed sociologically by writers such as David Byrne (Social Exclusion, 1999) — shifts attention from a snapshot of low income to the multi-dimensional and dynamic processes that push people to the margins of society.
Social exclusion refers to the way disadvantaged individuals or groups are shut out, fully or partially, from the economic, political, social and cultural systems that integrate a society. Its key features are:
Key Definition: Social exclusion is the process by which individuals or groups are pushed to the margins of society and prevented from participating fully by virtue of poverty, lack of basic competencies, discrimination, or other barriers.
The relationship between these four ways of conceiving deprivation can be visualised as a widening lens:
flowchart LR
A["Absolute (Rowntree): physical survival needs"] --> B["Relative (Townsend): customary living standards"]
B --> C["Consensual (Mack & Lansley): publicly-agreed necessities"]
C --> D["Social exclusion (Byrne): multi-dimensional, dynamic marginalisation"]
Strengths:
Criticisms:
It is important to distinguish social exclusion from the underclass concept it superficially resembles, because they carry opposite political implications:
| Social exclusion (Byrne) | Underclass (New Right) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the cause lies | In the processes that push people out (structural) | In the behaviour and values of the excluded |
| Direction of blame | Society excludes them | They exclude themselves |
| Policy implication | Re-include through opportunities and services | Change behaviour; cut benefits |
| Political stance | Broadly structural/reformist | New Right/behavioural |
The danger, noted above, is that "exclusion" can slide into "underclass" if the emphasis shifts from how society shuts people out to the supposed deficiencies of those who are shut out. A careful sociologist keeps the concept firmly on the structural side — emphasising that exclusion is something done to people by the organisation of the labour market, housing and services, not a culture they choose. This distinction previews the cultural-versus-structural debate that dominates the explanation lessons.
However poverty is defined, measuring it raises serious methodological problems — a point examiners reward heavily because it links to Methods.
Exam Tip: When a question touches on measurement, weave in the positivist/interpretivist contrast: positivists prize the reliability and comparability of income thresholds; interpretivists prize the validity of capturing what poverty means to those living it.
In practice, the UK uses several measures side by side, each embodying a different conception of poverty — a useful illustration of how the definitions in this lesson are operationalised:
The coexistence of these measures is itself sociologically revealing: there is no single agreed line because there is no single agreed definition. Each measure answers a slightly different question — "are the poor falling behind the average?" (relative), "are the poorest worse off in real terms?" (absolute), "are households actually going without necessities?" (deprivation). A sophisticated answer recognises that the "amount" of poverty reported depends on which measure is chosen, and that this choice is partly technical and partly political.
The choice between these definitions is never purely academic, because it directly shapes the apparent scale of the problem and therefore the political demand for action:
This is why the seemingly dry question of how to define and measure poverty is one of the most contested in social policy: define it narrowly and the problem looks small and largely solved; define it broadly and it becomes a mass condition demanding redistribution. The definition is, in the end, an argument about the scope of social responsibility.
A strong "evaluate definitions/measurement of poverty" answer argues a sustained line rather than listing definitions:
Item A
Sociologists disagree about how poverty should be defined. Some argue that poverty means lacking the resources for basic physical survival, a standard that can be measured objectively and compared across societies. Others insist that poverty must be understood relative to the normal living standards of a particular society, so that what counts as poverty rises as a society becomes richer. Critics of the relative approach argue that it confuses poverty with inequality, since on this definition poverty could never be eliminated as long as some people are richer than others.
Question 1 (10 marks): Applying material from Item A, analyse two problems of defining poverty in relative terms.
Question 2 (20 marks): Applying material from Item A and elsewhere, evaluate the view that poverty is best understood and measured as a relative rather than an absolute condition.
AO breakdown (20-mark essay): AO1 (Knowledge and understanding) ≈ 8 marks; AO2 (Application — using the Item and applying concepts to the question) ≈ 4 marks; AO3 (Analysis and evaluation) ≈ 8 marks. The 10-mark question is marked AO1 (≈ 4), AO2 (≈ 2/3 — explicit use of the Item) and AO3 (≈ 3/4 — developing each problem analytically).
One problem in the Item is that relative poverty "confuses poverty with inequality." This is a point made by the New Right like Murray. If poverty is relative then you can never get rid of it because there will always be people who are richer, so it is really just measuring inequality not real poverty.
Another problem is deciding what counts as normal. Townsend made a list of things people should have but someone has to decide what goes on the list, so it is based on opinion and might not be fair.
The first problem drawn from Item A is that relative definitions "confuse poverty with inequality." This is the central New Right objection, associated with Charles Murray: because Townsend defines poverty relative to customary living standards, the poverty line rises automatically with average incomes, so poverty could only be abolished by eliminating inequality itself. Analytically, this matters because it turns "poverty" into a permanent moral case for redistribution rather than a measure of identifiable hardship — which is why the choice of definition is politically loaded, not merely technical.
A second problem is that relative measures rest on value judgements about what is "customary". Townsend's (1979) deprivation index was criticised by Piachaud (1981) for including items that might reflect taste rather than enforced lack — a person without a cooked Sunday meal might be vegetarian rather than poor. This undermines the validity of the measure, because it cannot reliably distinguish genuine deprivation from lifestyle choice — a problem Mack and Lansley's consensual approach later tried to solve by surveying the public and isolating enforced lack.
Examiner-style commentary: The Mid-band response identifies two valid problems and names Murray and Townsend, but the points are asserted rather than developed and the Item is only loosely woven in. The Top-band response anchors each problem explicitly in the Item's wording ("confuse poverty with inequality"), names and explains the relevant sociologists (Murray, Townsend, Piachaud), and crucially analyses the implication of each problem — that the definition becomes political, and that validity is undermined — before signposting how Mack and Lansley address it. This analytical development of two distinct, well-applied problems is what lifts a 10-mark answer into the top band.
The view that poverty is best understood relatively is most associated with Townsend (1979), who argued people are poor when they lack the resources to participate in the customary life of their society. He built a deprivation index of normal activities and items, showing poverty is about social exclusion, not just survival. The Item's point that what counts as poverty "rises as a society becomes richer" reflects this relative logic. This is more convincing than Rowntree's absolute approach, which only measures bare physical survival and so understates hardship in a wealthy country.
However, the Item also notes the New Right criticism that relative poverty confuses poverty with inequality. Murray argues that on this definition poverty can never be eliminated. There is some force in this, but Mack and Lansley's consensual approach answers it by grounding necessities in what the public agrees is essential. Overall, a relative or consensual definition is more sociologically convincing than a purely absolute one, because poverty in a rich society is about participation, not just survival — though an absolute measure remains useful for identifying the most extreme destitution.
Examiner-style commentary: This is a competent Stronger-band essay: accurate Townsend and Rowntree, clear use of the Item, the New Right counter, and an evaluative judgement that distinguishes participation from survival. To reach the very top band it would need wider range (Byrne's social exclusion, the measurement problems of the 60%-of-median line, the feminist household-distribution point) and a more sustained analytical thread rather than a sequence of paragraphs. The judgement is sound but could be sharpened by explaining why the consensual approach specifically rescues the relative position from the inequality objection.
This content is aligned with the AQA A-Level Sociology (7192) specification.