Yuvisthi Naidoo

Poverty, Deprivation and Consistent Poverty

Controversy over the setting of poverty lines and its narrow focus on income has undermined the influence of poverty research on policy. The deprivation approach overcomes these limitations by identifying deprivation as an inability to afford items that receive majority support for being essential. This paper estimates the incidence of deprivation and compares the results with those produced using a conventional poverty framework. The results confirm overseas findings by showing that the groups most deprived differ from those with the highest poverty rates and that there is a low degree of overlap between income poverty and deprivation. Older people show up as faring better under the deprivation approach, while working-age individuals and families fare worse and the relative position of the most highly disadvantaged groups are worse in terms of deprivation than in terms of poverty. Deprivation also provides a clearer differentiation between those who can and cannot afford specific necessities than a classification based on low income, and is also shown to vary systematically with several indicators of subjective well-being. Estimates of consistent poverty that combine low income with deprivation are shown to differ from conventional (income-based) poverty rates, and provide the basis for future poverty measures.

Older marginalised people: pathways into and out of a marginal housing situation

This study1 explores the situation of marginally housed older people in NSW, Victoria and SA. It investigates pathways into homelessness and the importance of interventions and support to ensure that older, vulnerable people retain their accommodation. The research is based on 59 in-depth interviews with older people who were all clients of the Assistance with Care and Housing for the Aged (ACHA) program; a national survey of 46 ACHA agencies; and interviews with 15 ACHA managers.2 A key finding is that those older people in private rented accommodation who are dependent on income support are particularly prone to finding themselves battling to avoid homelessness. The death of a spouse, rent increases and eviction are common precipitators of an accommodation crisis. A lack of social and family networks and the breakdown of the extended family are also important. The virtual freeze on the building of social housing and the resultant scarcity of affordable and adequate accommodation and support services are another key factor. Intervention by outside agencies was found to alter dramatically the lives of vulnerable older people. The key intervention was helping to find adequate, affordable and secure accommodation. However, ongoing support usually is also critical to ensure successful and sustainable housing outcomes for older people.

The deprivation approach and the attainment of human rights: evidence for Australia

Conventional poverty studies adopt an income framework, in which poverty is defined as a lack of income (relative to need) and measured using an income poverty line. However, acknowledgment of the limitations of the income-based framework has resulted in alternative approaches to the conception and measurement of poverty designed to capture its multidimensional nature in ways that reflect the experience of going without, or deprivation. The deprivation approach identifies specific instances where people are denied access to items regarded as essential by a majority of the community in which they are living because of a lack of resources. This study uses the deprivation approach to illustrate how poverty can undermine the attainment of those human rights identified as important in Art 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Using the results from a recent social survey, we show that many of those forms of deprivation referred to in the UDHR exist among Australians in general and among those groups most disadvantaged. The results show that many sole-parent families, the unemployed and Indigenous Australians are experiencing deprivation in several of the standard of living dimensions referred to in Art 25, including those relating to the most basic needs for food, warmth, emergency savings, insurance protection and social interaction.

Mapping the Australian Poverty Profile: A Multidimensional Deprivation Approach: Mapping the Australian Poverty Profile

The limitations of income‐based poverty lines are widely acknowledged, but Australia lags behind many other countries in implementing new measures of social disadvantage based on the deprivation approach. A new suite of questions included in wave 14 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey allows the deprivation approach to be applied. This article describes the advantages of the deprivation approach and shows that while the income and deprivation approaches can produce similar overall results, the circumstances of some sub‐groups vary greatly according to which measure is used. A measure based on deprivation alone and/or a combined measure would be an important complement to conventional income‐based poverty rates.