|
|
|
Poverty and the Welfare State: Dispelling the myths By Paul Spicker A Catalyst working paper. Has our thinking about the welfare state been derailed by a rightwing obsession with the behavioural problems of a dysfunctional underclass? Paul Spicker, Professor of Public Policy at Robert Gordon University Aberdeen, argues that the left's discourse of "social exclusion" risks recreating the Poor Law culture that predated the Beveridge system and was revived in the 1970s by conservative thinkers like Sir Keith Joseph and the American Charles Murray. In fact poverty is not restricted to a self-contained minority cut off from the rest of the population, but is experienced by most of us at some point in our lives. The postwar welfare state was founded not to police the margins of society but to provide a universal level of security that all of us need. But the constant association of welfare with the moral, psychological, and cultural failings of discrete "problem" groups undermines popular support for and identification with a social security system that the majority will have reason to call on at times of economic disadvantage and misfortune. The same can be said for the propagation of dubious theories of "welfare dependency" and the persistent exaggeration of welfare fraud, which the pamphlet also details. Spicker concludes: "The politics of social security are persistently ill-informed. People keep repeating myths that have been disproved time and again. All the evidence we have indicates that poverty is not a problem of a permanently excluded underclass. Most of the population is vulnerable to it. The best way to help the poor within the welfare state is not to target programmes more carefully on the poor, but the converse: to ensure that there is a general framework of resources, services and opportunities which are adequate for people's needs, and can be used by everyone. That is what the welfare state was meant to do. That is what we have forgotten." "... a useful primer to facts and figures and the main issues in the
debate - clearly and concisely setting out the issues over the numbers
in poverty, for example. Spicker robustly rattles through the major issues
and is always clear about where he stands." Paul Spicker holds the Grampian Chair of Public Policy at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, where he is Director of the Centre for Public Policy and Management. He has written widely in the field of social policy; his recent books include Social Policy in a Changing Society (with Maurice Mullard, Routledge 1998), The International Glossary of Poverty (co-edited with David Gordon, Zed Books, 1999) and The Welfare State: a General Theory (Sage, 2000). "Benefit
fraud 'is exaggerated'" - The Guardian, 28 August 2002 |
 |
To read PDF documents you will need Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have a copy you can download it free from Adobe. |
