•Self-employment promoted to those on social security benefits as way out of poverty.•Large rise in self-employment in the UK but many now experiencing in-work poverty.•Pushing from unemployment to ...self-employment shifts social risks away from state.•New self-employed have least resource capacity to bear risks and responsibilities.•Inadequate state support for self-employed fails to reduce social and economic risk.
Analysis of the large rise in the numbers of self-employed in the UK reveals high levels of in-work poverty, especially among those coming off of social security benefits. Policies that are developed to alleviate social and economic risk regularly lead to behavioural responses to perceptions about the nature of such risk and to make individuals more accountable. Informed by accounting, finance and economic theories of risk, interviews with key informants who are experiencing self-employment and poverty, along with professionals from business and community development and poverty alleviation, are used to explore the support available to new entrepreneurs. Findings include that policy push from unemployment to self-employment shifts the social risks and responsibilities of employment from state and employers to those individuals with least capacity to bear them. Measures to mitigate resource disadvantage, including the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme, are found to be wanting and inadequate for the main client groups, and fail to reduce the social and economic risks faced in starting up a new business.
Abstract This paper investigates how being employed in public works exposes workers and their households to poverty. Public works consist of centrally planned and financed works targeting long‐term ...unemployed or inactive. Evidence is primarily negative concerning improved employment trajectories, while we still know little about the poverty outcomes. To examine this, we draw on the 2014–2019 cross‐sectional data of the EU‐SILC survey for Hungary. Hungary has invested significantly in these programmes over the last few years, and since 2014, it has provided a unique opportunity to access income and public works information within EU‐SILC. Results highlight the relevance of both quantity and quality of employment. Public workers are better off than long‐term unemployed. However, they show higher poverty risk than non‐public workers (about twice as much). Living with non‐public workers substantially reduces their poverty risk, while households of only public workers struggle more to avoid poverty.
Employment had risen to historically high levels in Britain before the coronavirus crisis; however, whereas work is traditionally conceptualized as a route out of poverty, this is no longer ...necessarily the case. Participation in non‐standard or low‐income work such as zero‐hour contracts, involuntary part‐time work and self‐employment is increasingly a feature of the labour market and in‐work benefits which top‐up low incomes have been pared back. This case study undertaken in the period before the coronavirus crisis takes a multi‐disciplinary approach in relation to three key questions: are working women resorting to food bank use in times of financial hardship?; to what extent is this a function of non‐standard working practices?; and is welfare reform a contributing factor? A three‐strand approach is taken: a synthesis of literature, an analysis of national data and in‐depth interviews with stakeholders involved with referrals to or delivery of emergency food provision within northern Britain. The findings highlight a growth in precarious employment models since the 2008/2009 recession and how this intersects with increasing conditionality in welfare policy. We contribute to the debate by arguing that ideological driven policy fails to acknowledge structural deficiencies in labour market demand and misattributes responsibility for managing precarious working patterns onto individuals who are already struggling to get by.
To uncover pathways for understanding and alleviating poverty, this paper offers an alternative approach for examining the real and unseen processes of destitution and in‐work poverty which shape the ...lives of consumers. We apply a critical realist paradigm structured around three core tenets—stratified realities, complex causations and generative structures—to surface the nuanced complexities of these issues. A critical realist lens encourages impact by focusing on the deep causes of enduring social problems and provides transformative consumer research scholars with an integrative way to work toward transformative policy action.
This article analyzes the current feelings of Finnish low-income working lone mothers and their views on what it means to be poor in the welfare state of Finland. This is done by analyzing written ...accounts of lone mothers through a qualitative content analysis. The data was collected in 2015 and 2021. The analysis reveals that mothers’ feelings of poverty have similarities to those described in data collected in a different context over 20 years ago. The article is inspired by an article published in Affilia in the year 2003 by Lynn McIntyre, Suzanne Officer, and Lynne M. Robinson. In their paper, McIntyre et al. analyzed the feelings of poor Canadian lone mothers. While the welfare regime and services influence how life is organized, it is evident that self-sacrifice for the children caused by poverty is very much a part of the written accounts of Finnish mothers. We show that while there are a few cultural differences in the feelings that lone mothers undergo on account of their low-income status, feelings such as loneliness are persistent and often shared regardless of time or geographical location. Therefore, we suggest that low-income mothers should be given greater support by society and governments to be able to feel hopeful and empowered rather than poor and alone.
Demographic trends escalate the demands for formal long‐term care (LTC) in the majority of the developed world. The LTC workforce is characterised by its very low wages, the actual scale of which is ...less well known. This article investigates the scale of poverty‐pay in the feminised LTC sector and attempts to understand the perceived reasons behind persisting low wages in the sector. The analysis makes use of large national workforce pay data and a longitudinal survey of care workers, as well as interviews with key stakeholders in the sector. The analysis suggests that there are at least between 10 and 13% of care workers who are effectively being paid under the National Minimum Wage in England. Thematic qualitative analysis of 300 interviews with employers, care workers and service users highlight three key explanatory factors of low pay: the intrinsic nature of LTC work, the value of caring for older people, and marketisation and outsourcing of services.
Most developed nations have a statutory minimum wage set at levels insufficient to alleviate poverty. Increased calls for a living wage have generated considerable public controversy. This article ...draws on 25 interviews and four focus groups with employers, low-pay industry representatives, representatives of chambers of commerce, pay consultants, and unions. The core focus is on how participants use prominent narrative tropes for the living wage and against the living wage to argue their respective perspectives. We also document how both affirmative and negative tropes are often combined by participants to craft their own rhetorical positions on the issue.
This book examines the potential role of European Union law in combating poverty and social exclusion in the European Union. Anti-poverty strategies have been part of the European Union agenda for ...decades. Most saliently, over a decade ago, the EU’s Member States pledged to lift 20 million people out of poverty. In spite of this commitment, the EU did not even meet a quarter of this target, and over 113 million people still were at risk of poverty and social exclusion by the end of 2020. This book addresses the incongruence between a quite developed EU policy strategy and a well-embedded legal objective on the one hand, and the lack of direct legal action on the other. Analysing the role of social policy instruments, fundamental rights, and the constitutional framework of the European Union, it makes a detailed case for a contribution of EU law to the policy objective of combating poverty and social exclusion. Drawing on work in law, politics, social policy and economics, this book will interest scholars and policymakers in the areas of EU law, labour and social security, human rights, political science and social and public policy.
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