Relative Poverty in Great Britain and the United States, 1979–2017

Abstract

This paper examines the major changes to the face of poverty in Great Britain over the past few decades, assessing the role of policy, and compares and contrasts this with the patterns seen in the United States, using harmonised household survey data. There are various commonalities between the countries, including a shift in the composition of those in poverty towards working‐age households without children, who have not been the focus of policy attention. There are also big differences, with a steadily increasing share of poverty in Great Britain – but a stable share in the United States – found in households with an adult in paid work. This perhaps explains why the anti‐poverty focus in Great Britain is now squarely on the plight of working households, while in the United States it is focused on labour force participation among the low skilled – even though, as we show, the United States has, for decades, been accustomed to in‐work poverty comprising a significantly higher proportion of overall poverty than in Great Britain.

Poverty, income inequality and living standards in Ireland

“…For example, the CSO uses a 'national' equivalence scale that (as shown in Table A.1) gives greater weight to second or subsequent adults and children aged 14 plus, while there are likely characteristics other than age and the number of individuals that affect a households' needs. Nevertheless, some method is needed for comparing incomes across different household types, and the approach we adopt allows us to produce estimates which can be compared to other European countries, the United States (Joyce and Ziliak, 2020) and Britain (Bourquin et al, 2020). Although we aggregate income to the household level, our unit of analysis throughout is the individual.…”

Investigating the multidimensional relative poverty in China: Evidence from Nanling Yao ethnic group area

“…The European Union, for example, uses 60% of a country’s median after-tax income as its relative poverty line; OECD countries use 50% of median income as the relative poverty line (Pu, 2020 ). Some later scholars also used similar methods to measure relative poverty in such as Great Britain, the USA and Russia (Joyce & Ziliak, 2019 ; Slobodenyuk & Mareeva, 2020 ).…”

The Problem Of Poverty In The Context Of Changes Institutional Environment

“…I have to say that this process has been going on with an increasing trend for the past five or six years. Similar problems exist in other countries (Joyce & Ziliak, 2019). However, in Russia there is a process of reproduction of the poor population, the reproduction of the "social bottom".…”