Lecture Notes - Week 3; who are the poor?

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Summary

Disability - lower income due to educational achievement, alienation, discrimination, benefit cuts

Religion / Ethnic Minorities - discrimination, moral panics from media

Young People - reliant on loans, high rent

Females - inequality in the workplace

High-Risk Groups

  • lone-parent families
  • children
  • unemployed
  • low paid (0-hour contracts)
  • elderly
  • homeless (no benefits)
  • disabled / sick
  • ethnic minorities

Lone-Parent Families More likely to be working-class women. Have to combine employment, childcare and housework (triple-shift), more likely to be workless or part-time. Twice as likely to be on low income than as couples without children. 30% work part-time and 22% work full-time, 1 in 4 in poverty. Gingerbread (charity);

  •  42% of SPF on council estates which may have deprived areas e.g failing schools, drugs
  •  dept problems 
  •  Mack and Lansley - single mums often have no savings
  •  Spenser - material issues lead to others e.g health, achievement

Suffer from negative labelling by the media and politicians (New Right)

Theory of SPF

Marxist - SPF are easily exploited 

Feminist - women are socialised to be housewives / mothers, have to fit work in around domestic role (career break)

Weberian - poor market situation, no power to 'negotiate' a good income, unlikely to be in a trade union for support 

New Right - dependency culture, single mums 'married to the state'

The Low Paid 

-  30% of poor are in low paid work

- 1.4…

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