It is easy to think that poverty is an LIC problem and that shanty towns only occur in LIC cities. The reality is that even within so-called wealthy countries there is poverty and that many HIC cities have their areas of poor housing, known as slums rather than shanty towns. HIC cities also contain people who are literally living and sleeping on the streets.

Figure 6.25: A slum area in an HIC city

In HIC cities, the term deprivation is widely used in connection with poverty. Deprivation is said to occur when a person’s well-being falls below a level which is generally thought of as an acceptable minimum. This minimum standard applies not just to one, but a number of different aspects of daily life. In the 13K, a multiple deprivation index (MDI) has been developed to assess the level of deprivation across the whole country. It is based on seven different quality of life indicators:

• income
• employment
• health
• education
• access to housing and services
• crime
• the living environment.

Calculating the index is quite complicated, but once it is done all the local authorities can be compared. From this comparison, it is possible to identify both the most deprived areas and the best areas.

Figure 6.26 shows the distribution of deprivation in Birmingham, once of the UK’s largest cities. The areas of greatest deprivation occur in two main locations:

• the more central parts of the city — here deprivation coincides with areas of either old and substandard housing or high-rise apartment blocks that were built after the end of the Second World War to house people displaced by slum clearance schemes

• towards the city’s edge — here deprivation mainly occurs in the estates of social housing built by the city for rent to poorer households.

The grey areas on Figure 6.26 are the areas with least deprivation (the best areas). They are therefore the parts of the city where wealthier people live, as in the northern part of the city and in a belt lying to the south-west of the city centre.

What are the symptoms of deprivation and poverty? Perhaps the most obvious are the physical signs of poor housing (slums) (Figure 2.26) and an unattractive living environment (noise, unsightilness, graffiti, etc.). Services, provided in these areas, such as schools, medical centres, sports facilities, park and shops, are often of a poor quality.

I

During the 1950s, when large numbers of immigrants frc~mmonwealth countries were r~uraged to enter the UK, many settled in Birmingham. It had plenty of cheap, rundown housing. There were plenty of jobs to be had in the factories and in public transport.

The people who live in these areas of poor housing also feature characteristics that are part of the symptoms of deprivation. In general, there is a relatively high incidence of unemployment and single-parent families. Many of those of working age are able only to take on unskilled, manual work. Many have received only a minimal education. There is also a relatively high incidence of crime and what are called domestic disputes (troubles between partners), anti-social behaviour, etc. What is also noteworthy is the concentration of Birmingham’s ethnic minorities

In studying the occurrence of deprivation, we need to be aware of what is called the cycle of poverty (Figure 6.28). This is based on the idea that poverty and deprivation are passed on from one generation to the next. The children of poor parents may receive little parental support and may be forced to attend inadequate schools. As a result, they leave school at the earliest possible opportunity with few qualifications. This, in turn, means that they have difficulties finding work and can therefore only expect to earn low wages. The children they have are born into the same environment of deprivation. Thus families tend to remain trapped’ in a cycle of poverty, being unable to improve their circumstances. The challenge to societies around the world is how to make it possible for people to break out of this cycle of poverty.