Naomi Finch

Overlaps in Dimensions of Poverty

The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey of Britain made it possible first time to explore poverty using three different measures applied at the same time on the same sample. The measures were: lacking socially perceived necessities; being subjectively poor and having a relatively low income. These approaches are all commonly used to identify the poor and to measure poverty but rarely if ever in combination. In this article we have found that there is little overlap in the group of people defined as poor by these dimensions. There are reasons for this lack of overlap, connected to the reliability and validity of the different measures. However the people who are defined as living in poverty by different measures of poverty are different. This inevitably means that the policy response to poverty will be different depending on which measure is employed. We have attempted to analyse overlap in two ways. First, by exploring the dimensions of poverty cumulatively, we have found that, the more dimensions people are poor on, the more they are unlike the non-poor and the poor on only one dimension, in their characteristics and in their social exclusion. Second, by treating particular dimensions as meriting more attention than others, we explored three permutations of this type and concluded that, while each permutation were more unlike the non-poor than those poor on a single dimension, they were not as unlike the non-poor as the cumulatively poor were. These results indicate that accumulation might be a better way of using overlapping measures of poverty than by giving priority to one dimension over another. The implication of the paper is that it is not safe to rely on one measure of poverty – the results obtained are just not reliable enough. Surveys, such as the Family Resources Survey or the European Community Household Panel, which are used to monitor the prevalence of poverty, need to be adapted to enable results to be triangulated – to incorporate a wider range of poverty measures.

Why are women more likely than men to extend paid work? The impact of work–family life history

AbstractExtending working life beyond the state pension age is a key European Union policy. In the UK, women are more likely to extend paid work than men, indicating that factors other than the state pension age play a role in working longer. Women are less able to build pension income due to their role as carer within the family. It, therefore, follows that gender inequalities over the life course continue into older age to influence need, capacity and desire to undertake paid work after state pension age. This paper explores how work, marital and fertility history impact upon the likelihood of extending employment. It uses the British Household Panel Survey’s retrospective data from the first 14 waves to summarise work–family histories, and logistic regression to understand the impact of work and family histories on extending paid work. Findings show that, on the one hand, women are extending paid work for financial reasons to make up for ‘opportunity costs’ as a result of their caring role within the family, with short breaks due to caring, lengthy marriages, divorcing and remaining single with children all being important. Yet, there is also evidence of ‘status maintenance’ from working life, with the women most likely to extend paid work, also those with the highest work orientation, prior to state pension age. But lengthy dis-attachment (due to caring) from the labour market makes extending working life more difficult. This has implications for policy strategies to entice women into paid work to make up for low independent financial resources.

Deprivation and variations in teenage conceptions and abortions in England

There are substantial variations between local authorities in the conception rate of teenagers and the proportion of these that end in abortion. This study builds two deprivation models that explain part of the variation in conceptions and abortions. It then identifies outliers, local authorities with teenage conception and abortion rates that are above or below those predicted by the model. It is suggested that the local authorities with lower than expected conceptions are the ones to look to when seeking to discover how to prevent teenage conceptions and those with higher than expected abortion rates may have abortion services that are more accessible. In general, spatial comparisons of conceptions and abortion should take into account variations in deprivation.

Family Policies in the UK

The New Labour government’s election victory in 1997 marked a transition away from a ‘familistic’ regime towards a more ‘individualistic’ one. This involves the promotion of employment for all, and thus has extended the right of access to paid work, and the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household, to women as well as to men. In March 1999, the government made a historic commitment to end child poverty in 20 years, thus recognising the economic rights of children. This article documents and analyses British family policy as supporting men, women, and children as citizens. It examines how New Labour and the Conservative governments before it have acknowledged and facilitated the economic rights of all citizens. It then discusses whether the state has extended citizenship to include and value care and ultimately seeks to determine to what extent the welfare state is built upon the breadwinner model of the family. To do this, it explores various policy areas, including the right (not) to have children; parental rights and obligations; childcare; leave from paid work to care for children and cash benefits and taxes for families.