Scepticism Over Poverty Measures

Poverty is A Wax Nose

Every few months we in New Zealand are confronted with the "reality" of poverty in New Zealand.  The latest is a report from the Child Commissioner on the rates of child poverty--that is, children living in poverty.   It's got to the stage where few people take such confrontations seriously any more.  

We are pretty confident that actual poverty exists in New Zealand.  We are very confident that child poverty most certainly exists.  Here is a case in point:

An Auckland mother who kept her toddlers in a cockroach-infested house has pleaded guilty to failing to keep a safe and hygienic living environment for her children.  The woman appeared for sentence on Monday though she was granted a discharge without conviction after a judge found a criminal record would prevent her from seeing her children again.

The North Shore woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, earlier pleaded guilty to two charges of failing to discharge a legal duty, namely keeping a safe and hygienic living environment for her children. . . . Police arrived to find dozens of dirty nappies on the floor, hundreds of cockroaches, rancid dishes, only one working light, and little food- some which had been left to rot and was covered in maggots.  By way of explanation, the mother had told police that she knew the house was a mess but that she was too busy to clean it because she spent nights at a local hospital, where Judge Philippa Cunningham said "ironically" she worked as a cleaner.

What we are deeply sceptical about, however, is relative measures of poverty.
 We suspect that most people are.  Authorities and researchers do the cause no good by doing the top-down, relative-scale assessments of child--or any other kind of--poverty.  No good at all.  The end result is public cynicism and scepticism.

What we need is a "hard", bright-line test for poverty that will stand this year, next year, and for the next ten generations.  The besetting problem with the current approach is that the measure of poverty is always changing--upwards.  The intelligent cynic will observe on this basis "the poor you will always have with you".  And the intelligent cynic will soon stop caring.

What is the bright-line standard that defines one as poor?  Is it living in a dwelling with no running water?  Or is it living in a house without double glazing?  Is it living in a family which eats only one substantial meal a day, or no substantial meal a day?  Tell us.  The demand, "By what standard?" must be put to all those in the industry of poverty research, coupled with the insistence that no relative standards be admitted.

Unless we have a hard definition of poverty which holds true across decades and generations, all attempts to discover the relative rates of poverty in this country are meaningless.  We don't need to do research, undertake surveys, pore over median income statistics.  We know the answer before any of this.  Relative measures of poverty will consistently tell us that between 25 percent to 40 percent of the population are living in poverty.  Thus, using relativist standards, poverty will always be with us, by definition.  No need, therefore, to get wound up about it.  Let the feelings of guilt and pity be assuaged.

But if we are working with an absolute standard for poverty overnight we move from the realm of manufactured guilt and pity to the realm of genuine concern.

Most people aged fifty and over in New Zealand, who were raised as children here, recall the relative state of impoverishment they lived in as children.  By today's relative, moving measures their lifestyles would now be most certainly included in a "living in poverty" category.  But they were not poor.  Not really.  Not on any absolute measure.

We heard once about a market gardening family back in the sixties.  A photo was once taken of the family--mum, dad and kids--standing out in front of the roadside stall where they sold a good deal of the farm's produce.  Later the photo made its way to the UK--where one young (upper middle class) university student gasped at the sight, remarking that it reminded her of scenes from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.  Such primitiveness.  Such poverty.

The reality could not have been diametrically opposite.  The now gentrified, superannuated children recall a childhood that was rich in most senses of the word--but relatively much, much poorer than the posh-speaking British student, or today's average Kiwi, for that matter.

There lies the problem.  As the old proverb has it: "one man's trash is another man's treasure".  That's why all relative measures of poverty are not worth the paper they are written on.  That's why we need an absolute bright-line measure of genuine poverty.  A measure freed from the clutches of guilt, envy, and faux-pity.

Only then will we be able to serious about reducing it--in an absolute and meaningful way.