Abstract
A persistent right-wing discourse on poverty insists that, in many cases, poverty is the result of domestic incompetence, improvidence, or male irresponsibility. Poverty is, on this view, to some significant degree, the result of poor management and irresponsible choices. Poverty researchers, by contrast, typically argue that there is very little evidence to support this diagnosis, and that poverty is largely simply a matter of lack of financial resources to live the type of life that is regarded as normal or socially expected, at a minimal level, in the affected person or family’s society. Nevertheless, for people on very low incomes there are normally difficult choices to be made, especially in terms of provision for children, particularly in the light of social expectations. Here I draw on a framework inspired by Sen’s capability approach, coupled with Rowntree’s distinction between primary and secondary poverty, and Townsend’s distinction between absolute and relative poverty. It allows us to see that even though the role of choice and behaviour in the causation and persistence of poverty is far less significant than structural factors, nevertheless individual choices will shape the type of poverty a family may face. In sum, I argue that a significant proportion of parents place themselves in secondary poverty in order to avoid a form of relative poverty for their children, especially so that they can meet the social expectations of their peers.
I would like to thank the participants at the Workshop on Poverty and the Family, at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, Salzburg, May 2018, for exceptionally helpful commentary on this paper. I’d also like to thank Katarina Pitasse Fragoso, Gottfried Schweiger, and Nicolás Brando for excellent suggestions on the final draft, and Gottfried also for organising the workshop.
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Notes
- 1.
For a parallel discussion of the US debate see Young 2011, Chapter 1.
- 2.
Of course, while going to the cinema will provide some normal, participation and status goods, it is likely that it will still leave the family short of what is normally expected in their society. But I will leave this complication aside.
- 3.
It can be argued that it still suffers relative poverty in another respect, in that it is likely not to be meeting social expectations related to diet. This is a fair point, though in this paper I am particularly concerned with what is available to public view, and diet is much less visible than joining in group activities, for example. I thank Gottfried Schweiger for pressing this point.
- 4.
I’m very grateful to Anna Snoek for emphasising the importance of future oriented choices.
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Wolff, J. (2019). Poverty, Social Expectations, and the Family. In: Brando, N., Schweiger, G. (eds) Philosophy and Child Poverty. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22452-3_4
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