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Chapter 21 - Poverty and Income Inequality: A Cross-National Perspective on Social Citizenship

from Part III - Problems of Discrimination and Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

By
Eiko Strader  and
Joya Misra
Edited by
A. Javier Treviño
A. Javier Treviño
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Massachusetts
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Summary

Global-scale economic crisis has brought renewed attention to issues of poverty and inequality, yet we often fail to critically examine what we mean by inequality. Poverty and inequality are social constructions; therefore, how they are defined has important implications for how societies understand and address inequality. This chapter provides an overview on measures and concepts used to study poverty and income inequality from a comparative perspective. We discuss the issue of poverty and consider how the social citizenship framework of T. H. Marshall opens new ways of understanding inequality. Increasing inequality has created a new class of poor, who are not only materially deprived but are also deprived of political and cultural life, unable to participate fully as members of a society, or are “socially excluded.” We argue that clarifying what we mean by social rights allows us to more concretely discuss the concepts of needs, equality, and social inclusion.

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Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems , pp. 385 - 408
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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