Beyond GDP

"They are, in a way, treating the symptoms - meanwhile, the root problems are getting worse."

Thus says one of the authors of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report claiming that one in three children in the UK is living in poverty, speaking about the Government's failing attempts to reach its 2010 target of halving child poverty. Yet, poverty is defined so that a couple with two children whose net income is less than £1300 per month after income tax and housing costs is reckoned to be poor. As someone who has never chosen a job because of its salary, I would say you can actually do quite a lot with that kind of money. It's all a question of priorities and budgeting. Now, I know we've had the debate about relative and absolute poverty before but, rather than worrying about how many televisions or foreign holidays someone can afford (not to mention expenses such as the £100 per month spent by the average 15 cigarettes-a-day smoker), I would be far more concerned about the world's ultra poor and those in this country trapped by family break-down, educational failure, economic dependence, indebtedness, and addiction.

Yes, we do need to make British poverty history, but we also need a different measure of poverty: one that factors in welfare dependency, poor skills, and family breakdown — one that measures the true state of our country's broken communities. The five "pathways to poverty" are problems that cannot be addressed simply by the Treasury, for they are not simply economic. There is, after all, more to human well-being than GDP.