Relative poverty

A brief categorisation of relative poverty 


This being in response to the ideas that there will always be poverty, in the sense that it is relative, and that in reality the relatively poor are not actually poor, objectively speaking.

• Relative poverty, in the ordinary sense, derived from differing incomes or costs - inevitable and in some sense desirable, in that it is the only alternative to total equality of outcome. (NB: Inheritance, being unearned, is not justified by this logic.)

• Competitive poverty - The difficulties created by experiencing "relative" poverty in an economy where others can dominate your life choices and possibilities by being richer. Accommodation and education are good examples of areas where this can occur. Transport is a partial example.In many countries, healthcare could be added as another example.

• Insertional poverty - It depends on your view of human nature I suppose, but I think it very reasonable to include social insertion as a primal need, and in my opinion more primal than physical well-being. If you do not have enough money to engage in the social pursuits of others, to transport yourself to them, etc. you cannot socially insert yourself. At a very low level of income (e.g. dole, minimum wage on part time hours) you may not be able to fulfil this basic need. 

• Precarious poverty - However "relative" your poverty, if you cannot be sure it will continue, you can find yourself in a frightening and stressful situation. This applies notably to ability to pay rent and stay in one's home. The welfare state offers a real but limited safety net in this regard. Relative poverty may or may not correspond to real precarity, but precarious contracts (e.g zero-hour) and limited reserves of money in case of problems are much more likely where poverty is greater, however "relative" the poverty is seen to be.

To finish off on a question, I might ask if it was better to live one hundred and fifty years ago, objectively poorer but relatively well-off than it is to live today on an indisputably relatively much higher income but at a precarious and isolating level of "relative" poverty.