Table Of Content'NEW POVERTY' IN THE EUROPEAN
COMMUNITY
'New Poverty' in the
European Community
Graham Room
Reader in Social Policy
University of Bath
in collaboration with
J os Berghman Luis Vila Lopez
Alfredo Bruto da Costa Gregory Mourgelas
Maria Grazia Giannichedda Seamus 6 Cinneide
Helmut Hartmann Diana Robbins
Bernd Henningsen Gaston Schaber
Frank Laczko Jean-Paul Tricart
Roger Lawson
Foreword by
Vasso Papandreou
European Commissioner for Employment, Industrial Relations and
Social Affairs
Prepared under the auspices of the Commission of the European
Communities
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21090-9 ISBN 978-1-349-21088-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21088-6
© Graham Room 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-52295-0
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-05701-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Room, Graham.
'New poverty' in the European Community I Graham Room, in
collaboration with Jos Berghman ... (et al. ]; foreword by Vasso
Papandreou: prepared under the auspices of the Commission of the
European Communities.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-05701-5
1. Public welfare-European Economic Community countries.
2. Poor-Services for-European Economic Community countries.
3. Unemployment-European Economic Community countries.
I. Berghman, Jos. II. Commission of the European Communities.
III. Title.
HV240.5.R66 1990
362.5'8'094-dc20 90-48650
CIP
For Pat Collett
Contents
List of Tables viii
Foreword ix
Preface xi
Notes on the Collaborators xii
1 Introduction 1
2 The Principal Discussions and Debates 8
3 New Poverty and Political Interests 35
4 Concepts, Definitions and Measurement 35
5 Recent Trends in Poverty 49
6 Poverty, Unemployment and the Labour Market 68
7 Poverty, the Family and the Life Cycle 83
8 Poverty North and South 98
9 Government Responsibility and Response 104
10 Inequality, Citizenship and Social Cohesion in the
European Community 115
References 125
Index 132
vii
List of Tables
5.1 Social Assistance in EC Countries 52
5.2 The Composition of the Poor Population 60
5.3 The Composition of Those Receiving or Reliant on Social
Assistance 62
5.4 The Incidence of Poverty Among Various Population
Groups 64
5.5 The Proportion of Various Population Groups Who
Receive Social Assistance 66
6.1 Female Labour Force Participation Ratios 68
6.2 Labour Force Participation Rates of Workers Aged 55-64 69
6.3 Unemployment Rates in the Community 70
6.4 Long-Term Unemployment 71
6.5 Very Long-Term Unemployment 71
6.6 Percentage of Employees in Part-Time Employment in
EC Countries 79
6.7 Male and Female Unemployment Rates 80
7.1 Single Parent Families as a Percentage of All Families
with Children, 1960-85 86
7.2 Proportion of Population aged 65 or over, 1960-2040 94
7.3 Proportion of Population aged 75 or over, 1960-2040 95
8.1 Sectoral Shares in Total Employment, 1970-86 98
viii
Foreword
Poverty is a major challenge for the social policies of the Member
States of the European Community. It is also a challenge to the
Community as a whole: the continuing economic crisis has increased
and highlighted situations of social exclusion, and the changes
expected to come with 1992 require a constant watch to be kept on
solidarity and cohesion within the Community.
Since the mid-1970s, growing attention has been paid in the
European countries to changes in the patterns and processes of
poverty. Various authors, responsible authorities and non
governmental organisations underlined that these countries were
faced with new forms of poverty, resulting from increasingly preca
rious employment, changes in family structures and limitations in
social protection.
The creation of the Single Market will contribute to economic
growth and, in time, to an improvement in the employment situation
and therefore also in the situation of the most underprivileged. By
means of its general economic policy, the Community is contributing
to this development.
Its effects, however, at least initially, on specific groups and/or
areas have to be closely monitored and adequate measures have to be
promoted at the appropriate level with a view to prevent increased
marginalisation. Through the activities of its Structural Funds the
Community can help to prevent these negative effects.
Of course, as this book reveals, the forms taken by poverty during
the 1980s vary among different countries of the Community. The
problems of the structurally underdeveloped regions differ from
those of the regions which are suffering industrial decline and both
differ from those of the regions in which the benefits of the
Community's growing scientific and technological base are likely to
be concentrated. This variation only emphasises, however, the
importance of strengthening the social and economic cohesion of the
Community's citizens. The social dimension of the internal market is
thus a fundamental component of the task which the Community has
set itself.
Establishing this social dimension is one of the predominant
concerns of the Commission. A number of activities are planned or
implemented in this respect. First of all, the charter of fundamental
ix
X Foreword
social rights affirms solemnly the willingness of the Community to
guarantee a number of rights of workers. The work programme
adopted by the Commission to implement it concretises such guaran
tees at the appropriate level.
Such a concretisation should take place within the context of the
principle of subsidiarity. A number of social policies are and will
continue to be dealt with at national level. This is the case for social
security as well as for policies aiming to fight against social exclusion.
The Community's role in this respect is to promote a greater
convergence of social security objectives and policies and to stimulate
the debate and develop exchange of experiences and good practices
through various programmes.
In the framework of the Council Resolution on social exclusion and
the new Community action programme to foster the economic and
social integration of the least privileged groups, efforts will be made
at Community level to secure more effective political action to
protect the Community's weakest citizens. The Commission is work
ing actively to produce proposals likely to be acceptable to all sides
and marking concrete progress towards greater convergence between
the social policies of the Member States. It is also working on
proposals in regard to measures guaranteeing adequate aid and
resources for the elderly and for people who are outside the labour
market, and to action for social integration of the least privileged
groups.
I hope therefore that this book will lead to a wide-ranging public
debate in the countries of the Community and I thank Graham Room
and his colleagues for their significant contribution to fighting against
social exclusion and therefore building Social Europe.
V. PAPANDREOU
Preface
The study from which this book has developed was sponsored by the
Commission of the European Communities and was undertaken
during the Spring of 1987. The study dealt with the debates about
new poverty which are taking place in the countries of the Commu
nity; the availability of statistics on the new poor; and the measures
taken recently by governments in direct response to the problem of
new poverty. For each country of the Community, a consultant
provided a report on these topics, within a common framework, and
a synthesis report was submitted to the Commission for its internal
use.
With the encouragement of the Commission, an enlarged version
of this study has now been prepared for publication, in the name of
those who contributed to the original study. However, as well as
drawing upon the original new poverty reports, it also makes
reference to a range of other research materials which have been
completed under the auspices of the Commission during 1987-88.
The data which are available for the poorer countries in the south
of Europe - Greece, Spain and Portugal - are much more limited
than for those of the north. This seriously limits the analysis. More
generally, the data which are available for comparative poverty
research remain rather limited. The Commission's efforts to develop
improved systems for harmonised data collection are therefore of
considerable potential importance. Because of these limitations, I am
particularly grateful to Demetrios Karantinos for his assistance with
the analysis of the situation in Greece.
I am grateful to the officials of the European Commission for
making this study possible and for permitting its publication. I am
especially grateful to Madame Vasso Papandreou for kindly agreeing
to write a foreword. The analysis and conclusions presented here are
not, however, the responsibility of the Commission.
Some of the analysis presented here has already appeared in
summary form in Room, Lawson and Laczko (1989).
GRAHAM ROOM
xi
