ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom and Canada have some of the highest rates of poverty and inequality among developed nations (Pasma 2010; Brewer et al. 2008; Yalnizyan 2007; Unicef 2007; Morissette and Zhang 2006; Babb 2005). These high levels have persisted throughout the periods of economic growth experienced in both nations over the last three decades and it is likely they will now increase as a result of the present economic climate (MacInnes et al. 2009; Oxfam 2009; Yalnizyan 2010, 2009). History demonstrates that definitions and political responses to poverty are bound up with the dominant social, political and economic ideas and practices of a time as evidenced by just a few examples: the incarceration of those with little or no money in workhouses in the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom and Canada, the expansion of supports for the unemployed after World War II, or the introduction of workfare in the 1990s in some provinces in Canada. How poverty is understood and is defined affects how pressing the issue is perceived to be, and what people choose to do or not do about it (Lister 2004; Jørgenson and Phillips 2002; Edelman 1977). As Lister argues, ‘poverty’ must be recognized as an always contested political concept because how it is understood influences the extent to which social action, through the redistribution of resources is necessary (2004). This chapter aims to provide some insight into contemporary definitions of poverty by identifying the frames that dominate mainstream news coverage in Canada and the United Kingdom and discussing their significance.
