A short resume of Peter Saunders book, The Poverty Wars. A research about poverty in Australia and how to tackle it.

1. THE POVERTY
WARS
A Book Review by Peter Saunders
RECONNECTING RESEARCH WITH REALITY
Magister of Social Welfare
University of Indonesia

2. Poverty/ˈpävərtē/
noun
The inability of getting choices and
opportunities, a violation of human dignity.
“
“
- United Nations

3. WHY POVERTY?
• Before we can tackle the problem of poverty we need a
clear idea of what poverty means in a conceptual and
definitional sense
• We need a clear understanding of the nature and causes
of poverty before we can know what kinds of actions are
needed to combat it
• We need measures that can communicate concern to the
public and serve as a rallying call for action

4. PRINCIPAL ASPECTS OF THE MODERN
DEBATE OVER POVERTY
• Examines the statistical evidence to see what it implies for the broad parameters of the
problem: what exactly are we trying to deal with?
• Examines how the concept, measurement and meaning of poverty relate to other notions
such as deprivation, social exclusion and capability failure that have emerged in recent
writings
• Explores what is known about the causes of poverty, including the role of external factors
and those that follow from specific events or individual choices
• How the causes of poverty become concealed in statistical studies that confuse the
measurement of poverty with its underlying causes

5. poverty is bad, not only because it restricts
people’s choices and their ability to participate in
society, but also because, over time, it produces
other bad effects on them, on their children and
on society as a whole.
-Peter Saunders

6. MAPPING POVERTY PROFILE
Family
Characteristics
Gender
Young and Old
Work
and Family
Place
and Time

7. Family Characteristics
• Whether people are married or not
• Whether or not they have children
• How many children they have
• Whether or not they own their own home
• Whether they are above or below pension age
The adequacy of social security payments for
different groups

8. Family Characteristics
Poverty can also arise from factors that are
not attributable to individuals or families,
including the nature of the local area or
neighborhood in terms of the quality of its
infrastructure and availability of services

9. Gender
Poverty is more prevalent among women than men, since
women outnumber men in two of the groups most
susceptible to poverty (the single aged and sole parents)
(Cass, 1985)
Despite the trend towards increased female labour force
participation, there are still fewer women than men in
paid work, implying that joblessness is a more important
determinant of poverty for women

10. Gender
Poverty acquires its gendered character in the nexus of
employment with the family, and in particular through a
gender division of labour in which women have relatively
greater involvement in the unpaid work of the household and
child rearing, while men have relatively greater engagement in
paid work. Although the force of this gender division of labour
has steadily weakened over the last two decades, its
underlying asymmetry remains as matters of both social
expectations and practical labour market realities.
(Shaver notes, 1998, p. 279)

11. Young and Old
People in the early and later stages of their lives are generally
unable to earn income in the labour market and are thus
dependent on other people (or other incomes) for the resources
that protect them from poverty.
The age boundaries that define these categories are not set
biologically but are conditioned by attitudes about people’s
economic and social roles and what these imply for behaviour

12. Young and Old
Three features stand out
from the available studies of
poverty in old age.
1. Home ownership plays an important role in protecting older people from poverty by
reducing their housing costs, freeing up resources for other needs
2. Statistical estimates of poverty are very sensitive to where the pension sits relative to the
poverty line: many of those who rely on the pension for their main source of income fall
close to the poverty line
3. the fact that poverty is much lower among aged couples than among the single
aged suggests that the loss of a partner is a very stressful event for older people – in
financial as well as emotional terms.

13. Work and Family
Access to a job has always been the best protection against
poverty, while getting a job is the best way out of poverty for
those who are in it.
Increased competition between families for a relatively fixed
number of available jobs can thus contribute to increased
job-related inequality, as well as to higher poverty among
those who have most difficulty finding a job
Market forces have little respect for the poverty or family
circum- stances of those who are looking for work.

14. Work and Family
Having any job is not an
automatic guarantee
against poverty
Not having a job does
not automatically imply
poverty.

15. Work and Family
Having any job is not an
automatic guarantee
against poverty
Not having a job does
not automatically imply
poverty.
Together, these results indicate that
employment growth alone will not
guarantee a reduction in poverty unless
two conditions are satisfied
1. the trend decline in the proportion of full- time jobs must be arrested and
reversed, since only a full-time job can generate enough income to avoid poverty
in the vast majority of cases
2. greater effort must be directed at ensuring that overall employment growth
translates more effectively into reduced unemployment

16. Place and Time
Where you live can have important direct and indirect effects on
the probability that you will face the threat of, or actually
experience, poverty. Unemployment and poverty are closely
related and because unemployment is geographically
concentrated, there is an obvious spatial dimension to poverty.
High unemployment in an area can trigger a series of adjust- ments
that can entrench communities in a downward cycle of poverty and
deprivation. Local businesses find it increas- ingly difficult to survive
and local branches of national and international corporations (and
government agencies) are closed down by the merciless logic of
profitability and value for money.

17. THANK YOU
Magister of Social Welfare
University of Indonesia