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> It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s. Do they have double the access to affordable housing? Or t
by paganel 4y ago
> It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s.
Do they have double the access to affordable housing? Or to good-enough and cheap healthcare? (I know about the NHS, I also know that their waiting list has exceeded 7 million recently). Can they send their kids to schools good enough for those kids to be able to have a real chance in life later on?
Because, at the end, poverty is defined by the answers to those questions, it doesn't matter that lots of "poor" people can now purchase smartphones and flat TVs while Queen Victoria 150 years ago couldn't.
- simonh 4y agoMost of those NHS waiting lists didn’t even exist back in the 80s. That’s another case where a “worse” statistic hides a massive underlying improvement. Were spending twice as much on health care now as a proportion of GDP, and our GDP has doubled in real terms. I use the 80s as my reference because those are the days of my youth, when I became politically aware so it’s the benchmark I look back to. I’ve looked for studies on access to education and outcomes for those in poverty over time and not come up with anything. Lots of studies how poverty affects education, but none so far on how that has changed. Anyone know?