Living Decently

Abstract

One of the reasons why poverty lines became popular at the turn of the century was their promise of a scientific technique that would dispense with moralising about poverty. We argue that a price paid in this quest has been an impoverishment of the richness of the notion of 'a decent life', the moral concept underlying poverty. I n addition, poverty lines have in practice been more to do with inequality at the bottom end of the income distribution than with poverty. The purpose of this article is to rehabilitate the measurement of poverty, and to make it credible. We set out our preferred method qfpoverty measurement, and illustrate it using data from the Australian Standard of Living Study. A feature of our approach is to distinguish clearly between issues of inequality and issues of poverty. Questions such as who is on the bottom of the income distribution, whether this .has changed over time, and how income levels ofthe worst off compare with the mean, are questions of inequality. As such, the answers tell us nothing at all about how the worst oflare actually living. To answer that question, we require direct measures of consumption and of social participation. These measures are not as simple, but they provide us with knowledge about poverty that poverty lines have promised, hut have not delivered in a credible fashion.* We wish to acknowledge the most helpful criticisms of earlier drafts of this article

Income, wealth and economic inequality in Australia

“…In Australia, comprehensive analysis of economic well‐being was pioneered by Richardson (), Travers & Richardson (, , ). The rationale behind their analysis was as follows (: 34):

Annual money income, even when after‐tax and adjusted by an equivalence scale to take account of variations in the composition of the family, is flawed as a measure of standard of living because, inter alia, it ignores the services received from assets, the value of time not spent in employment, and goods and services received in kind from employer, family or government. These can be important and need not be closely correlated with income.

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Understanding and Improving Data Quality Relating to Low-Income Households

“…Income is the frequently used unit of choice; for instance poverty lines are expressed relative to income, national wellbeing is often gauged by gross domestic product per capita, and so on. However many researchers (for example Travers and Richardson, 1993) have pointed out that while income provides an indication of resources available to households it is not complete and in any case resources do not indicate how households actually live. Resources may be used wastefully or wellbeing may be supplemented by consumption provided by government (for instance through non-cash benefits such as health and education).…”

The Elusive Quest for ‘Those Most in Need’

“…For details see Richardson and Travers (1995); also Travers and Richardson (1993). Remote areas of Australia were excluded, as were institutions and caravan parks.…”