BritainMeasuringpoverty英国衡量贫困.pdfVIP

Britain Measuring poverty 英国 衡量贫困 The end of the line 贫困终止 The government sets out to redefine what it means to be poor 政府着手重新定义贫穷 When Seebohm Rowntree, a chocolate-maker and pioneering social researcher, began measuring poverty in York in 1899, heworked out the minimum needed to buy enough food for “physical efficiency ”. In 1935, when he repeated the study, Rowntree addedallowances for cigarettes, newspapers and a holiday. By 1951 he concluded that poverty was on its way towards being eradicated,with only pockets among the elderly left, and stopped counting. 1899 年，当巧克力制造商和社会学家先驱的西伯姆 ·朗特里（ Seebohm Rowntree ）在约 克（ York ）开始测量贫困，他提出了 “最低温饱线 ”的理论。在 1935 年，在反复研究之后， 他又推行了关于香烟，报纸以及假期的补贴制度。并在 1951 年的时候，他得出结论，称除 了部分老人外，若按此方法进行下去将会贫困将会得到消除，因此他停下了研究的脚步。 Few now experience the raw penury of Rowntree ’s day. But measuring poverty remains an obsession. In its dying days the lastLabour government passed a law committing its successors to reduce child poverty . That is causing trouble for the present lot. Underthe law, poverty is defined primarily in relative terms: families with less than 60% of the median income are considered to be poor .On November 15th Iain Duncan Smith, the welfare secretary, was set to launch a consultation to come up with a better definition .He wants to include things that he regards as the real causes of want: worklessness, educational failure and drug and alcoholdependency . 现在很少有人能体验到朗特里时代的贫困。 但是测衡贫困至今仍是个谜题。 在上一届工 党最后的执政日子里， 通过了一项关于他们下届将会减少儿童贫困的法案。 这对当下执政者 造成了许多困扰。 根据这项法律， 贫穷的定义是相当于而言的： 当家庭的收入低于收入中位 数(median income) 的 60% 时，即被认为是贫困。在 11 月 15 日，福利大臣伊恩 ·邓肯 ·史密斯 （Iain Duncan Smith