Relative poverty, British social policy writing, and public experience

Relative poverty (which categorises as ‘poor’ those who fall seriously below normal nationwide material standards) is undoubtedly a useful and important concept in social science. However, this article argues that the widespread view that the word ‘poverty’ means ‘relative poverty’, which in mainstream social policy academic writing often extends into implying that those (including many poorer people) who do not define poverty this way are necessarily misguided, has led to an incomplete portrayal of the lived experience of poorer British people. The article examines published empirical work, before presenting findings from British Social Attitudes surveys and interviews with 40 unemployed Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants and 30 employed people. Both the existing and new findings exposed aspects of public attitudes and experience which resonate with noted unanswered academic criticisms of defining poverty as relative poverty, and which have tended to be glossed over or treated dismissively by social policy authors