Poverty article 60 Years of the Welfare State

This is no less true today, when inequality is high and popular discourse underestimates poverty. One answer may be social distance – the affluent do not see that poorer people are struggling, both because society is increasingly divided and because its collective imagination views poverty in terms of ‘rags and starvation’, not as the relative problem which research now highlights. Also, as poverty is so stigmatised, people experiencing it may not define themselves as poor, and after years of GDP growth, it is more comfortable to explain poverty as the result of the failings of individuals rather than understanding that we are all responsible for it and for its solutions.