Abstract:The limitations of income-based poverty lines are widely acknowledged, but Australia lags behind many other countries in implementing new measures of social disadvantage based on the deprivation approach. A new suite of questions included in wave 14 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey allows the deprivation approach to be applied. This article describes the advantages of the deprivation approach and shows that while the income and deprivation approaches can produce similar … Show more
“…(see Saunders et al. ; Saunders & Naidoo ). When applying the method to children, Main (: 452) makes the important point that parents;… cannot be assumed to be able to represent children (particularly older children) either in terms of responses to specific questions, or in terms of broader perceptions of what is important in their lives.…”
Section: The New Approach To Measuring Child Povertymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This latter measure is the deprivation rate for each item under the consensual approach. Also shown is the percentage that does not have items that respondents themselves regard as “essential for all children.” This provides an alternative way of identifying deprivation since it captures those who do not have an item that they think all should have (see Saunders & Naidoo ). It also potentially avoids any distortion caused by the impact of preference adaption on survey responses by not referring to what children “want.” There is no clear pattern of differences between the results produced by the two methods, although those derived from the latter approach are somewhat lower.…”
Section: Measuring Child Deprivationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“… The removal of the mobile phone from the list of essential items might seem at odds with the findings of the focus groups, where the importance of this item was emphasised by most participants (see Saunders et al, : Chapter 4). However, the aim here is to identify a set of items that, as a group, can best identify poverty among children and the results indicate that having a mobile phone does not overall contribute significantly (in the statistical sense) to this exercise. …”
Income-based studies of child poverty treat children and young people as effectively invisible and determine the poverty status of families or households on the basis of information that is provided by, and is primarily about, K E Y W O R D S child well-being, deprivation, disadvantaged groups, poverty, social exclusion
“…(see Saunders et al. ; Saunders & Naidoo ). When applying the method to children, Main (: 452) makes the important point that parents;… cannot be assumed to be able to represent children (particularly older children) either in terms of responses to specific questions, or in terms of broader perceptions of what is important in their lives.…”
Section: The New Approach To Measuring Child Povertymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This latter measure is the deprivation rate for each item under the consensual approach. Also shown is the percentage that does not have items that respondents themselves regard as “essential for all children.” This provides an alternative way of identifying deprivation since it captures those who do not have an item that they think all should have (see Saunders & Naidoo ). It also potentially avoids any distortion caused by the impact of preference adaption on survey responses by not referring to what children “want.” There is no clear pattern of differences between the results produced by the two methods, although those derived from the latter approach are somewhat lower.…”
Section: Measuring Child Deprivationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“… The removal of the mobile phone from the list of essential items might seem at odds with the findings of the focus groups, where the importance of this item was emphasised by most participants (see Saunders et al, : Chapter 4). However, the aim here is to identify a set of items that, as a group, can best identify poverty among children and the results indicate that having a mobile phone does not overall contribute significantly (in the statistical sense) to this exercise. …”
Income-based studies of child poverty treat children and young people as effectively invisible and determine the poverty status of families or households on the basis of information that is provided by, and is primarily about, K E Y W O R D S child well-being, deprivation, disadvantaged groups, poverty, social exclusion
“…In particular, Townsend’s deprivation approach forced the question about whether people’s living standards were consistent with prevailing social norms (Saunders, 2015a; Townsend, 1979). The deprivation approach identifies the essential items needed to maintain an acceptable standard of living, and those who cannot access them are considered to be experiencing deprivation (for a recent discussion of the deprivation approach, see Saunders and Naidoo, 2018). The significance of Townsend’s deprivation approach notwithstanding, it is a consensus view of the community that is used to establish what items are essential, and the consensus is rarely informed by community members who live in poverty.…”
Section: Definitions Of ‘Poverty’mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The Australian poverty debate has largely used an economic lens and has ‘proceeded without giving explicit consideration to the meaning of poverty’ (Saunders, 2000: 15). As Saunders and Naidoo (2018: 336) point out, ‘Australian poverty research is dominated by an income-based, poverty-line approach that is divorced from the experience of poverty and disconnected from the reality of people’s lives and living conditions.’ For many sociologists, the term ‘poverty’ is typically used in relation to money: for example, income levels (Deeming, 2010; Halladay, 1972); financial stress (Higgs and Gilleard, 2006); monetary and economic measures alongside sociological measures of deprivation (Deeming and Gubhaju, 2015); and material wellbeing (Walter, 2002). Contributing to the knowledge generated through economic perspectives, this article illustrates the importance of examining poverty as experienced by individuals.…”
This article argues for the importance of defining poverty from the perspective of those who experience poverty. How poverty is defined and operationalised is critical to policy and academic debates, as this is intertwined with explanations, causes, and possible solutions. Yet current definitions are typically provided by the ‘non-poor’. What we lack is knowledge of whether these definitions of the concept are similar to or different from those understood and conceptualised by those experiencing poverty. Australian poverty research has typically relied on panel data, administrative data, or surveys to construct and define ‘poverty’. We propose that Australian poverty scholars embrace phenomenology as a way to highlight the voices of those experiencing poverty.
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