EMPLOYMENT, POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION: EVIDENCE FROM THE POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION SURVEY OF BRITAIN

most comprehensive and scientifically rigorous survey of its kind ever undertaken. It provides unparalleled detail about deprivation and exclusion among the British population at the close of the twentieth century. It uses a particularly powerful scientific approach to measuring poverty which: § incorporates the views of members of the public, rather than judgments by social scientists, about what are the necessities of life in modern Britain § calculates the levels of deprivation that constitutes poverty using scientific methods rather than arbitrary decisions. The 1999 PSE Survey of Britain is also the first national study to attempt to measure social exclusion, and to introduce a methodology for poverty and social exclusion which is internationally comparable. Three data sets were used: § The 1998-9 General Household Survey (GHS) provided data on the socio-economic circumstances of the respondents, including their incomes § The June 1999 ONS Omnibus Survey included questions designed to establish from a sample of the general population what items and activities they consider to be necessities. § A follow-up survey of a sub-sample of respondents to the 1998-9 GHS were interviewed in late 1999 to establish how many lacked items identified as necessities, and also to collect other information on poverty and social exclusion