How does the UK define poverty?
” Anyone with kids can get social housing ” Rubbish! When we nearly lost our house to mortgage repossession last year, and we had a newborn baby, the council refused to help us, saying that they had “no council housing available” and the most they would do would be to put us in a bed and breakfast hotel for 6 weeks whilst we saved up for a private rent. We only managed to keep our house because a family member loaned us the money to pay off the arrears, which had risen because I had to stop work whilst I was pregnant. Benefits are £90 per week for a couple, £54 per week for Child Tax Credit and £18 child benefit – that gives a family of 3 the grand sum of £162 to live on. My partner is currently the only one working – I am at home with our baby son although I have started looking for a job. My partner works his guts out but as he is unskilled and we cannot currently finance his training, he is paid minimum wage. We have the cheapest possible mortgage on a house which only cost us £72,0
The term ‘poverty’ is often used as interchangeable with ‘deprivation’ and that is defined using the indices of deprivation which takes into account a number of aspects of life, such as income, employment, health and disability, education, barriers to housing and services, the living environment and crime. The country is carved up into Super Output Areas (SOAs) and a score is produced for each one. Often low income can be a symptom and cause of a number of other related problems which can lead to people become trapped in a cycle of poverty. It’s actually not that easy to get social housing these days and a lot people do not know about all the benefits they are entitled to so actually they are trying to live on unreasonable amounts and therefore are unable to access the same opportunities as other more wealthy people… hence they live in poverty.
