Poverty – far more than a numbers game
February 18th, 2009 by Joshua Fenton-Glynn Posted in Attitudes
The numbers that highlight the scandal of poverty in the sixth richest country in the world only give a glimpse of the lives of some people living in the UK. In reality, people who are in poverty – often through distressing circumstances that are no fault of their own – have to make choices no one should have to make. Choosing between Christmas presents and warm meals for their children, for example.
I have been working for Oxfam on UK Poverty for the past six months and one of the bigger projects I have had has been putting together key facts on poverty for our website. Distressing facts about poverty are all too common – I would always be dissatisfied leaving out a fact that I felt mattered. But in the editing process you have to cut things. Things like the fact that 8 per cent of families can’t keep their home warm enough in winter.
But most of all, I found it impossible to put into my list of facts what being in poverty really means. This is something of which – since working at Oxfam – I have become acutely aware. I met a mother who had to decide whether to give her children Christmas presents or hot meals in the month before Christmas. And a couple (see the video below) who looked after four children on benefits with the mother suffering from depression after the loss of a child and the father unable to work because of his caring responsibilities.
I have also become aware of is how easy it is to find yourself in poverty through no fault of your own. There was the woman I met who had a comfortable life until her husband died, spent her savings looking for a new job, and could no longer look forward to a secure retirement. Or the young woman who had to quit her job because of stress and lived on £500 a month.
I now know the statistics about poverty in the UK inside out, but it is too easy to forget that behind the 13.2 million people in poverty and the 2.9 million unemployed are as many stories about how they got there, what they have to go without and what they have to give up through no fault of their own.
