How the term 'poverty' has changed

You’re not wrong but it’s a good thing that times have moved on and expectations are higher now.

My take on this is that the U.K. is a wealthy country so we can’t in good conscience have people living destitute when the people get to live lives of extraordinary privilege. Where you set that minimum level of living standards is subject to debate and available resources but we should have a minimum standard of living in my opinion and that should evolve over time.

100%. People I work with can’t afford smartphones. If they manage to buy a second hand one for a kid, it gets robbed. Lots of temporary accommodation has no Wi-Fi anyway. Data’s too pricey. UC is online. Homelessness appointments have to be made online. Where I work we often have to give people burner phones so we can get hold of them. But they can’t afford to top up the credit.

This is such an interesting thread. So many posters have reflected on this complex issue and added such thoughtful comments. Economics is so complicated and so important.
And still so many voters in the UK, England in particular grasp for easy solutions from political parties.
No set of policies to address poverty are simple or easy or cheap to implement. It would be great to see our present government have a national discussion about this issue and open up what is currently as so many posters have mentioned a hidden but huge problem.
In Ireland they created a citizens council who looked at the issue of abortion being illegal. They investigated it all in the public view, called witnesses and so on. Then there was a referendum in which the decriminalise abortion side won easily. I was there the day the vote happened . It was amazing. Older Irish people said they never thought it could even be discussed let allowed resolved!
So it can happen there are other ways to deal with these highly emotive issues of great complexity.

Of course that's true, although people still die due to dangerous living conditions and yes, they do sublet or live in overcrowded conditions.

The poverty still exists, but we've ensured the people we're living off are overseas, where we can avoid seeing them, then complain if they're forced to.migrate here due to the poverty we keep them in.

Then people refuse to cut down a little on the exrraordinary luxuries they take for granted, in order to lessen climate change or in order to redistribute some of the wealth they've taken.

This was 1970s and 80s

I don't recognise your description of 'old fashioned' poverty. I'm in my 50s and grew up on benefits, my parents had a council house, my mum had enough money to regularly went to the bingo and my dad the pub and betting shop (a few times a week each). My mum also smoked heavily. A lot of my wider family were also on benefits and had a similar lifestyle. My nan also lived in a council house and didn't work (she and my mum both had a couple of hours a week 'cash in hand' cleaning job) she lived on benefits and my two cousins lived with her after there parents both left. They all had enough money to live on and more importantly, secure housing. Our council houses only had a gas fire in the livingroom for heating though.

If we compare to people on benefits now, one big difference I see is insecure, massively expensive, private housing. This must add enormous stress to people's lives.

Maybe not a smart phone but Internet access is certainly essential as the pandemic proved
Those children who couldn't access the Internet couldn't access on line lessons etc
Practically everything is done onnline these days maybe things have gone to far but that's not the fault of people in poverty who can't afford Internet access.

id love to rent a room out

but I don’t have one to spare

Interesting aside, I was reading about the medieval practice of “second sleep” recently - we have forgotten about it nowadays, but in the past it was common to wake in the night and check the embers of your fire were still alight, ready to be stoked and coaxed back into a fire in the morning.

Collectively we forget and distort a lot about the ordinary lived experiences of the past. Changing language is part of this - the true meaning of poverty now isn’t quite the same as what is was. But it’s still poverty.

It’s why the study of history remains so fascinating and important.

i think bed-sharing in the past is possibly a red herring - if you have lots of kids and no central heating, it’s unsurprising same-sex kids bunk in together even in relatively wealthy households, because you can’t leave a fire burning in the night and it’s freezing to sleep alone. It has fallen out of fashion, like wearing hats in bed or having drapes on the bed, partly because most houses have windows that no longer accumulate ice on the inside. But also because of our better grip on how family groups operate: The original Booth report was horrified by the amount of sexual abuse revealed in working class households where whole families shared beds and adults had no privacy, and that was a huge and horrific downside which was another driver for change.

Now, if kids are bed-sharing, it is sign that something is badly wrong in a household and a true indicator of poverty.

It's interesting to think about. Lives lived in poverty look very different now to 100 years ago but I think there are still many people who are faced with the same problems- how to feed, clothe and keep warm a family. Nowadays the breadline jobs are different - no one is going to take in sewing or laundry because there's no demand for those services, likewise baking. Much more likely to take multiple out of home jobs like cleaning, caring etc. As soon as the jobs are out of the home you have childcare issues, which brings significant costs.

There is absolute poverty, and relative poverty and you’re misunderstanding the difference.

I understand your sentiments. But I’m sorry lots of what you say isn’t true. Inequality and deep, deep poverty is again rife. Thousands of people are experiencing the same issues as previous generations. If you saw what I see, you wouldn’t think we’ve come a long way. Life is appalling for many people, including kids and pensioners. The most upsetting thing is people have no idea.

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

Poverty means insufficient money to reasonably participate in the society to which you belong, including accessing leisure activities, having an emergency buffer, and the ability to meet realistic short and long term goals. Its a relative term with the comparator being other people in your country and era, so the lifestyles of people decades ago aren't relevant.

My health centre seems to regard it as ridiculous if you phone to make a GP appointment and tell you to do it via the online booking service. However, the online service just makes an appointment and texts it to you. If it's at a time when you have a work commitment, you have to cancel it and start again.

After 3 tries and getting increasingly frustrated by appointment dates/times when I had to be elsewhere, I rang to book in person so I could be sure that it was at a time when I could go. The person who took the call was really quite indignant and tried to tell me to do it online.

Next time I might just say I don't have the internet...

I agree 100%. Poverty even today in other parts of the world means something else entirely. Not that people who are struggling here should settle for what they have - because some things could and should certainly improve! But I got torn apart not long ago on another thread. I made a similar point about human rights when somebody claimed they had none here in the UK. Real absence of human rights looks different (see for example what happened to those poor women and children who got burned alive in the DRC the other day). Failing to recognise that won't help safeguard the rights and the prosperity that we do have in this country.

100% this.

Lots of people judge how things are from their own living standards and those they know. They don’t watch reports, read accounts or look at statistics.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publications/negative-budgets-data/

No it doesn't, but I do think it is important to look back and see how far we have come and remember that on a societal level, when we are bemoaning how horrendous everything is. Of course for the individual struggling, the fact it could be worse is of no value, but we all seem intent on pretending that life is appalling and has never been worse, when - on a population level - this is demonstrably untrue. It's important for us to remember that, particularly policy makers. By remembering how we have progressed we may also gain insight into how to progress further.

But poverty is a relative concept - so yes, it may feel tough having less than those around you (and there's a whole other question separate from this discussion about whether or not that is fair) but in the UK those in poverty are not, when compared with previous generations, experiencing the same issues. It doesn't mean they don't have different ones. But let's not pretend that everything has never been worse. Pointing that out isn't saying we should stop trying, it's saying we have done well, let's do better. At least I think it is.

This. There is hardly any affordable housing nowadays. Where I am they have started renovating offices into tiny studio apartments, basically 1 small room, a kitchenette and a bathroom. The full length and width windows mean there’s no privacy without blocking out all the light, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, rent is over £1k a month. There are families with children living there, I’m sure they would love a 2 bed house.

It means that the overwhelming majority of people in this country have a much better standard of living than you.

Don't you want that recognised in some way so that things could be improved for you?

Is this a thinly veiled benefit bashing thread? Do you want us to go back to the 1900s? Shall we start leaving disabled babies in a room with the window open, would that make you feel better?

Also, this. If we're not striving for continual improvement for humanity what the fuck is the point. We might as well allow nuclear Armageddon

No. You are wrong. In my line of work I see the real picture of poverty. Elderly people with no central heating, eating nothing but sandwiches for years and becoming malnourished.

I'm afraid you are a very lucky person who has no contact with actual poverty in this country.

Idk I know whole families living in one room mum dad and all the kids. I agree that many of the people who moan about being broke on this site aren't actually broke though but there definitely are people who really are broke out there.
Food is easier to get than back in the day though

And 100 years before she was alive she would've been considered well off compared to a large % of the population, and 100 years before that she would've been considered as living in luxury with the food she had and the fabrics and bedding she had. Society moves on thankfully.