Paths out of Poverty

This morning Conservative Home ran a piece looking at welfare reform and briefly hinting at there "3 paths out of poverty" personally to me this sounds like a potential title for a self help book. However it is an important issue and one definitely worth discussing.




The three options offered by Conservative Home are Education, Family and Work but there is no explanation in the article as to why/how these are the paths out of poverty and even less detail given to what poverty actually is. The only sentence I can find that relates to the, very nice, picture is

...it is every individual's responsibility to escape poverty by acquiring a basic education, providing for his or her family and by taking work.



Tim Montgomerie does mention that the government has a responsibility to help the individual achieve these goals but ultimately it is up to them. The reality of this statement is that actually what Tim is arguing is that working and making sure you spend money on your family for their essential needs is what helps people escape poverty. Education is a means to ensure that you get work, providing for your family ensure that child poverty doesn't exist, that money isn't flittered away on gambling or alcohol whilst not buying essential items for the family. Work provides money, motivation, purpose and betters your own life and those around you.



The problem is that not everyone can be in work without job creation or as they have been described by some "non-jobs". There seams to be a truth that in every economy there is a point where no more jobs are created. In some cases those in who are unemployed can quickly find new employment and there is a high turn around in the job market, in other cases this can be a near permanent state through personal and environmental factors.



There are some other factors that are necessary for gaining employment. Lack of housing can be a trap that can be easy to enter and extremely difficult to escape. Without an address to put on an application form then you can't get a bank account or a job. Only when there is an act of grace or state provision of housing can this cycle be broken and a life of hand out be ended.



Fair wages at work are also very important to end poverty, after all if you are paid so little that you can not afford the basic provisions then you can not provide for your family no matter if you are educated and have a job.



Access to provisions such as water, sanitation, health care and food services are fortunately issues that don't have to be contemplated in Britain due to their universal availability. Admittedly in some cases lack of shelter and money can provide obstacles in these areas but if someone has shelter and a job with a fair wage then these other resources should be available.



So far I have only looked at a very small definition of poverty that address basic human resource needs such as water, health services etc. However in reality poverty is about much more than just money and if we used a definition of wholeness of life it would be much more appropriate. There are many very rich people who suffer from sever depression due to the lack of social needs being met. The effect of loneliness and feelings of isolation of people can not be underestimated, it can cause health issues, addictions, losing work, not doing essential tasks and many other factors.



The other problems is that poverty is always judged relatively to levels of wealth, considering that poverty is defined as lack of basic needs this definition can be highly inappropriate and plays into redistributive hands. I have no problems with the rhetoric of redistribution but to confuse the two isn't correct and the issue of poverty is a much more important issue to address than redistribution. In some cases using a, bottom 10% of society, bench mark is a great way to examine the level of poverty people are in, whether social mobility is present and many other factors and so we should still use it an examine it. However poverty needs to be assessed on those who don't even have the bare necessities.



So really when we talk about escaping poverty we need to talk not only about work, education and family but also addictions, housing, mental health and even community. This doesn't mean the state has to provide them (imagine a government forcing you to have kids so that you fulfilled the family quota) but it should at least enable and not prevent these.



Jorge Mortman recently said a quote that really challenged me and got me thinking

"The opposite of poverty isn't property, it's community."

Being a Christian I think he was drawing on reference to the book of Acts where it talks about the community of believes having everything in common and selling their possessions so that no one was in need. In communities like this we want to meet every need that a person has, both physical, mental and spiritual.