Income Poverty, Deprivation and Exclusion: A Comparative Study of Australia and Britain

Abstract

Poverty research has a long history in both Australia and Britain, but its influence on policy remains subject to political priorities and ideology. This can partly be explained by the limitations of defining poverty as low income and measuring it using an income poverty line. This article examines two national data sets that allow the income poverty profile to be compared with, and enriched by, the incidence of deprivation and social exclusion, measured using data that directly reflect experience. Although a degree of care must be applied when interpreting these new indicators within and between countries, a validated poverty measure is developed that reflects both low income and the experience of deprivation and exclusion. When results for the two countries are compared, they reveal stark differences between the alternative indicators. Britain has the higher income poverty rate and, although the incidence of both deprivation and exclusion are higher in Australia, Britain still has more validated poverty. The distributional profiles of deprivation and exclusion are shown to be very different in the two countries. These differences are explained by the very low incomes of low-income households in Britain, relative to other British households and relative to their Australian counterparts. Despite these differences, the results indicate that the same three groups face the greatest risk in both countries: lone parents, single working-age people and large (couple) families.

Monitoring Trends in Poverty and Income Distribution: Data, Methodology and Measurement

“…32 32 This feature of the Australian hardship profile has been shown by Saunders and Adelman (2005: figures 1 and 2) to be absent from the British data, where hardship falls away sharply after the first (income) decile. …”

“…30 30 This approach has been used in Ireland to define ‘consistent poverty’ (Nolan & Whelan, 1996) and in Britain by Bradshaw and Finch (2003) to identify ‘core poverty’. A comparison of the degree of overlap between low‐income and indicators of deprivation and exclusion in Australia and Britain is provided by Saunders and Adelman (2005). …”

Using non‐monetary deprivation indicators to analyze poverty and social exclusion: Lessons from Europe?

“…Details of the confirmatory factor analysis underpinning this in terms of factor loadings are shown in Table 4. A variety of national studies have also investigated dimensionality using similar statistical methods (see, for example, Saunders & Adelman, 2006), and these again bring out that the dimensions distinguished will depend on the range of items available in the data set in question.…”

Poverty and Hardship among the Aged in Urban China

“…Others have investigated the robustness of income poverty estimates by comparing them with estimates based on direct observation of deprivation and social exclusion. A key feature of this latter approach is its focus on examining the overlap between alternative measures, arguing that this can help to validate income poverty estimates and increase their credibility (Finch and Bradshaw 2003; Saunders and Adelman forthcoming).…”