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A cheer for Iain Duncan Smith – but he will make enemies
Kristian Niemietz
28 May 2010
7 comments

“The purpose of my life here is to improve the quality of life of the worst off in society.” Such ambitious rhetoric is not unusual for new incumbents at the Department for Work and...
Poverty in Britain, past and present
Kristian Niemietz
2 September 2009
4 comments

In A History of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr describes post-war Britain as a grim place in material terms. In 1950, only 4% of the adult population owned a television, and only 3% went on holidays...
Labour standards or liberty?
Art Carden and Joshua Hall
25 August 2009
4 comments

The International Labor Organization and other groups argue that the absence of international labour standards makes it harder for the world’s poor to escape poverty; further,...
Child poverty in Wales: increase employment not benefits
Kristian Niemietz
1 July 2009
comments

“Approximately 32 per cent of children in Wales – 192,000 children – live in poverty”, argues a condensed report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The paper (which builds on...
Are the “poor” still with us?
Peter King
1 May 2009
14 comments

A fellow academic recently commented that the phrase “housing for the poor”, which was used in the title of an issue of Economic Affairs I edited in 2008, was, to quote, “...
No frills, please: how private healthcare is spreading to India’s poor
Kristian Niemietz
27 April 2009
6 comments

In the early 1990s, Nigel Lawson dubbed the NHS “the closest thing the English have to a religion”. Today, this religion has probably been replaced by a more disillusioned belief that...
An alternative history: how poverty fell under Thatcherism
Kristian Niemietz
13 March 2009
12 comments

Past experience is the foundation on which our beliefs about the desirability of different policies and institutions are mainly based … While the events of the past are the source of...
Testing times for “New Europe”
Richard Wellings
5 February 2009
2 comments

Recent unrest in Latvia and Bulgaria has emphasised the economic difficulties faced by the formerly communist countries in central and eastern Europe. Indeed a new IEA study, New Europe’s Old...
Will the economic crisis reduce poverty?
Kristian Niemietz
28 January 2009
10 comments

Once the current recession is finally over, poverty researchers might well find themselves confronted with a puzzle. For it is entirely possible that the downturn will actually help the government...
Poverty-stricken, in relative terms
Kristian Niemietz
16 January 2009
6 comments

There is a country in Europe where it is estimated that 20% of households have to live on less than half the average income. Among the working population, the bottom 30% receives just 7% of total...
Housing, poverty and the planning system
Kristian Niemietz
3 December 2008
20 comments

Twenty-nine per cent of English homes are not ‘decent’ places to live, according to the latest edition of the English House Condition Survey. They fail to meet the ‘decent homes...
How relative poverty statistics can be manipulated
Kristian Niemietz
27 November 2008
10 comments

I have written on this blog about some of the logical flaws associated with ‘relative poverty’, arguing that even if we were to accept the premise that poverty was a relative concept, it...
What happened to poverty in Scotland?
Kristian Niemietz
13 November 2008
8 comments

On Monday this week, the New Policy Institute released a report called Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Scotland 2008, which appears to have encouraging findings. According to the report,...
Poverty, mobility, inequality? Can somebody please tell us what they are talking about?
Philip Booth
3 November 2008
4 comments

Today, in a response to a report suggesting that social mobility was improving, Chris Grayling, the Conservative Shadow Welfare minister said: “The truth is that Britain today is a country...
Is poverty rising in OECD countries?
Kristian Niemietz
27 October 2008
4 comments

A new report by the OECD, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries, warns: “Poverty is rising in OECD countries. Over the past 20 years, it has risen from 9.3% to 10....

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