The Changing Dynamics and Social Outcomes of Deep Poverty in the UK

This collaborative award will contribute towards wider efforts seeking to
rethink how we currently conceptualise poverty by examining internal
heterogeneity within the broader category of 'the poor'. Specifically, this
collaborative award will explore the changing dynamics and social
outcomes of deep poverty and what this means for poverty measurement
and alleviation.
This award will make an important empirical, conceptual and policy
contribution that aligns strongly with two WRDTP pathways. First, this
award will explore how unemployment, social background and
demographics (e.g. race, gender and age) impact upon the extent and
dynamics of deep poverty, including what this means for wider well-being,
health and social outcomes that are central to the Well-being, Health and
Communities pathway. Second, this award will contribute towards the
research and policy agenda of the Sustainable Growth, Management and
Economic Productivity pathway by exploring household and tax-benefit
factors contributing towards pro-poor growth. This is of particular
importance in light of the pandemic's disproportionate impact on
low-income groups (in terms of health, income and social outcomes).

Working across the sociology of work, economic sociology and social
policy, this award will enable the doctoral researcher to draw on insights
from across the social sciences. This award will enable to doctoral
researcher to combine multi-disciplinary perspectives to explore the
changing dynamics and significance of deep poverty over time.
Social policy and the sociology of work are, in many respects,
multi-disciplinary fields of enquiry. Economic sociology has made significant
headway in the measurement and analysis of poverty both as a unidimensional category and mulit-dimensional experience. In particular,
innovations and methodological experimentation developed by economic
sociologists has made it possible to better capture and research
low-income dynamics of those in deep poverty across advanced capitalist
contexts. This is particularly the case in America. The lessons, methods
and tools developed by economic sociologists in this field will be brought
into conversation with some of the analytical questions that have occupied
those researching (deep) poverty within social policy and the sociology of
work.
This collaborative award will also bring previously out-of-reach professional
expertise and knowledge to bear on the research question through the
partnership with the income analysis team in the Department for Work and
Pensions.