ABSTRACT
Recent research has highlighted the continued over-representation of women amongst those suffering poverty and women’s greater vulnerability to the risk of poverty during their lives. Women’s heightened vulnerability to poverty has a crucial effect on the question of how poverty is, and should be, measured. Firstly, this means quite simply being aware of the gender of those who are living in poverty or deprivation. Secondly, it requires a method which attempts to explore the life-long risk of exposure to poverty, in addition to ‘snap-shot’ measures of the ‘poor’ at any one moment in time. Thirdly, it requires a conceptualisation of poverty which goes beyond the measurement of household income and household consumption. Levels of poverty amongst women vary according to their household type. In lone parent and single person households levels of poverty were higher for women than they were for men.
