Poverty and deprivation in the Western City
The nature of deprivation
A fundamental issue in the debate over the nature and extent of deprivation is the distinction made between absolute and relative poverty. the absolute or subsistence definition of poverty,derived from that formulated by rowntree (1901 p. 186), contends that a family would be considered to be living in poverty if its tatal earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiendy. This notion of a minimum level of subsistence and the related concept of a poverty line exerted a stong influence on post-second World War britain. Thus the system of national Assistance benefits introduced following the Beveridge report (1942) was based on calculation of the amount required to satisfy the basic need of food, clothing and housing plus a small amount for other expenses. The same priciple underlies the officail definition of poverty in the USA, where the federal goverment indentifes a range of poverty thresholder and number og children under 18 year of age. Poverty thresholds are updated annually and adjusted for inflation in an attempt to provide an objective measure of poverty.(in 1999 the poverty threshold for a family of four was $17,029)