ABSTRACT
Poverty amid plenty is the world’s greatest challenge (World Bank 2001). In Europe most countries have followed the strategy of ‘liberalization’ to pursue economic prosperity in the new global market over the last two decades. This has led to an increase in unequal social conditions among citizens. In most countries, inequalities of income have been growing. In some, the incomes of the richest groups are rising fast, while the incomes of the poorest groups have grown little in real terms, or are even falling (Townsend 1993; Cornia 1999). Neo-liberal economic reform and transition in former socialist states has also resulted in an increasing gap between rich and poor and the polarization of socialist cities (Andrusz et al. 1996; Clapham et al. 1996; Hegedus and Tosics 1994; Struyk 1996; Szelenyi 1996). An obvious consequence of the new economic order, as observed by Harloe (1996), is the growth of mass unemployment and poverty, together with the process of physical and social exclusion and segregation. In Russia, for example, the World Bank estimated that 25 per cent of households were in poverty in July 1992, rising to almost 32 per cent by summer 1993 using the official poverty line (Clarke 2000). This income disparity and the persistence or growth of poverty have attracted deep concern among academics and government officials (Gordon and Townsend 2000).
