ABSTRACT
This chapter presents new evidence, drawn principally from a survey in Greater London in 1985–86, which shows that levels of means-tested assistance in Britain have been, and are, substantially lower than levels of income required to surmount poverty. First, a poll of opinion showed that subjective assessments of the level of income needed by households were substantially higher than government benefit rates payable to every size and type of household. Second, the objective relationship between income and deprivation was examined to determine the levels of income at which the deprived and non-deprived could be best differentiated. Again, the level was much higher than basic rates of social security paid by the government. The similar results obtained from these two techniques with regard to the levels of income required to avoid multiple deprivation imply that it may be possible objectively to determine a ‘poverty line’ that is acceptable to the majority of people. The research is put into the international context of growing concern about poverty in rich industrial as well as poorer countries and the different historical approaches in Britain to ‘subsistence’ poverty and ‘relative deprivation’. It is hoped that the two research techniques (subjective assessment and discriminant analysis) will be developed in subsequent national and cross-national research.
