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This paper examines the influence of the Troika on the retrenchment and reform of social security in Ireland during its bailout between 2010 and 2013. To do this, it draws on data from in-depth interviews with senior civil servants and civil society organisation staff who met with the Troika as part of their quarterly missions to Ireland during this period. The key themes which emerged from these interviews include the largely domestic origins of social security retrenchment and reform; the surprising, and distinctive, positions adopted by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund (IMF); the extent of the Irish government's room for manoeuvre in this area, and the ways in which the Irish government defended social security against proposals for additional cuts put forward by the Troika. The paper concludes by arguing that the scope for domestic decision-making was heavily constrained, yet non-trivial, and that the Troika's influence comprised not only ‘powering’ but also ‘persuasion’.

The concepts of poverty, social exclusion and deprivation are widely employed but often problematic. This paper discusses some problems with prominent interpretations of these concepts and how Amartya Sen's capability approach can provide a conceptual framework that can overcome these problems. It is argued that the capability approach can reflect the many ways that human lives are blighted and that it thus offers a promising framework for poverty analysis. Six insights for poverty analysis provided by the capability approach are discussed.

Poverty analysis is currently undergoing a multidimensional turn, increasingly focusing on the many ways in which human life can be impoverished and not just on material poverty. In this paper, we present an analysis of material poverty and multiple deprivation in Britain, which is inspired by the capability approach. We argue that the additional complexity of multidimensional analysis requires that it provides some insight not achieved by a more straightforward approach focusing on material poverty alone. Our findings indicate that whether a multidimensional assessment identifies different people as being in poverty depends on whether our interest is in identifying vulnerable individuals or in identifying vulnerable groups and whether we focus on dimensions in aggregate or disaggregate forms. We find that, although material poverty and multiple deprivation identify very different individuals, they display greater congruence in terms of identifying vulnerable groups, especially where aggregate measures are used.

There is growing concern about the problem of in-work poverty in the UK. Despite this, the literature on in-work poverty remains small in comparison with that on low pay and, in particular, we know relatively little about how people move in and out of in-work poverty. This paper presents an analysis of in-work poverty transitions in the UK, and extends the literature in this field in a number of identified ways. The paper finds that in-work poverty is more transitory than poverty amongst working-age adults more generally, and that the number of workers in the household is a particularly strong predictor of in-work poverty transitions. For most, in-work poverty is a temporary phenomenon, and most exits are by exiting poverty while remaining in work. However, our study finds that respondents who experience in-work poverty are three times more likely than non-poor workers to become workless, while one-quarter of respondents in workless, poor families who gained work entered in-work poverty. These findings demonstrate the limits to which work provides a route out of poverty, and points to the importance of trying to support positive transitions while minimising negative shocks faced by working poor families.

Poverty analysis is in the midst of a multidimensional “turn” due, in part, to the growing awareness of the limitations of relative income measures of poverty. In this paper, we argue that the conceptualisation of poverty remains a neglected aspect of this multidimensional turn to date, and demonstrate that the counter-intuitive results which flow from relative income analyses are not problems of measurement, but are entirely consistent with the conceptualisation of poverty under Peter Townsend’s dominant Poverty as Relative Deprivation framework. In response to these problems we articulate an alternative framework, Poverty as Capability Deprivation, drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability approach, and argue that this provides more persuasive explanations as to why some nations have greater poverty than others and why poverty remains a problem even in the richest nations. L’analyse de la pauvreté est au beau milieu d’un « tournant » multidimensionnel dû, en partie, à la prise de conscience croissante des limites des mesures de pauvreté en termes de revenus relatifs. Dans cet article, nous affirmons non seulement que la conceptualisation de la pauvreté reste un aspect négligé de ce tournant multidimensionnel, mais nous démontrons que les résultats contre-intuitifs qui découlent des analyses en termes de revenus relatifs ne sont pas des problèmes de mesure, mais sont avant tout congruents avec le cadre dominant de la pauvreté défini par Peter Townsend dans son ouvrage intitulé La Pauvreté comme Privation Relative. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, nous élaborons un cadre alternatif qui s’appuie sur l’approche des « capacités » d’Amartya Sen, La Pauvreté comme privation de capacité, et qui permet d’expliquer pourquoi certaines nations conservent un niveau de pauvreté plus élevé que d’autres et pourquoi la pauvreté demeure un problème même dans les nations les plus riches. Die Armutsdiagnose befindet sich inmitten einer multidimensionalen Wende, die zum Teil auf das wachsende Zugeständnis zurückzuführen ist, dass Einkommensmaßnahmen nur begrenzte Auswirkungen auf die Armut haben. In diesem Beitrag behaupten wir, dass die Konzeptualisierung der Armut im Rahmen dieser multidimensionalen Wende vernachlässigt wird und zeigen auf, dass die gegenintuitiven Ergebnisse, die auf relativen Einkommensuntersuchungen fußen, keine Messfehler sind, sondern sich durch Peter Townsends Konzeptualisierung der Armut, wie in seinem Werk „Poverty as Relative Deprivation“ beschrieben, erklären lassen. Zur Problemlösung tragen wir mit einem alternativen Raster bei, „Poverty as Capability Deprivation“ – Armut als Fähigkeitsentzug, aufbauend auf Amartya Sens Fähigkeitsansatz und argumentieren, dass dieser Ansatz besser erklärt, warum manche Nationen eine größere Armut als andere kennen und warum Armut selbst in reichsten Ländern ein Problem bleibt.

Concerns about the quality of housing feature prominently in academic and policy discussion on housing, yet there is little agreement about how housing deprivation should be measured or monitored. In empirical studies, measures of housing deprivation are typically examined for one of two purposes—either to compare incidences of housing quality problems for different groups, which typically leads to an examination of performance of different measures of housing deprivation, or as dependent variables to examine competing theories about what explains cross-national variation in such problems, which typically ignores these measurement considerations. Our paper seeks to analyse measurement and theory jointly, focussing in particular on the EU’s severe housing deprivation measure, and its subcomponents—overcrowding and housing conditions problems. In descriptive analysis, we show that the two components of the severe housing deprivation measure are weakly related and pattern differently across nations and that the aggregation rule of the main measure has a substantial influence on observed incidences of this problem. We subsequently construct multi-level regression-based models and demonstrate that the two components have quite different determinants. Our paper has implications for the measurement of severe housing deprivation in Europe, for theories that seek to account for differences in housing outcomes, and for policy that seeks to tackle housing deprivation problems.

The measurement of poverty as 'consistent' poverty offers a solution to one of the primary problems of poverty measurement within Social Policy of the last three decades. Often treated as if they were synonymous, 'indirect' measures of poverty, such as low income measures, and 'direct' measures, such as indices of material deprivation, identify surprisingly different people as being poor. In response to this mismatch, a team of Irish researchers put forward a measure which identified respondents in as being in poverty when they experienced both a low standard of living, as measured by deprivation indicators, and a lack of resources, as measured by a low income line. Importantly, they argued that the two measures required an equal weight. In this paper, I present a reconsideration of the consistent poverty measure from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. In particular, I examine the claim that low income and material deprivation measures should be given an 'equal weight'. I argue that, from a conceptual perspective, the nature of the indicators at hand means that a deprivation-led measurement approach might be understood to align with the definition of poverty which Nolan and Whelan outline and, from an empirical perspective, that it is the material deprivation measure—and not the low income measure—which is particularly effective in identifying individuals at risk of multiple forms of deprivation. However, I argue that greater attention needs to be given to the question of whether indicators of material deprivation provide a sufficient measure of material poverty and suggest that advancing the measurement of material deprivation beyond its relatively rudimentary state represents an important priority for poverty research.

Indicators of material deprivation are typically based on a two-part question, asking, first, whether respondents possess a series of deprivation items and, second – if they do not – whether this is because of a lack of resources or is by choice. This second subquestion, or 'enforced lack' criterion, is ubiquitous but its efficacy has been questioned by a number of authors. In an important critique published in Fiscal Studies, McKay (2004) claimed that older people were more likely than younger respondents to report that they did not want the items they lacked, despite their lower incomes, and also that the enforced lack criterion introduced a subjectivity which, in effect, required respondents to feel poor in order to be classified as such. This critique has potentially profound implications for poverty measurement. In this paper, we seek to address the question of whether, if we are to employ indicators of material deprivation for poverty measurement, we should include the enforced lack criterion or not. In seeking to answer this question, we draw on data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and present tests of reliability and validity on indices of material deprivation, with and without the enforced lack criterion. Using odds ratio and analysis of variance methods, we find that the inclusion of the enforced lack criterion provides a measure of material deprivation which is both more reliable, and more valid based on a subjective measure of deprivation as well as on a majority of more objective forms of deprivation. Amongst the remaining minority (ill health for both methods and income quintile for the analysis of variance method), the divergent results can be explained, at least in part, by the older age profile of respondents in poor health and on low incomes. Thus, while there are legitimate concerns about the performance of such deprivation indicators amongst certain subgroups – in particular, amongst older people – on aggregate the enforced lack criterion helps to distinguish between poverty and preference.

This article examines the relationship between tax credits and in-work poverty, drawing on the findings from a major national study on in-work poverty. We present an analysis of (i) the income packages of working families and (ii) the performance of tax credits in relation to anti-poverty objectives, drawing on data from the Households Below Average Income survey between 2004/5 and 2014/15. Our study generates five novel findings, including that tax credits reduce the poverty gap of recipient households by two-thirds; that tax credit cuts post-2010/11 have served to focus payments on single parent families and households with greater numbers of children; and that tax credits make up just one third of the social security income of working households. We argue that understanding in greater depth the interaction between tax credits and income adequacy amongst working families is necessary to provide a firmer foundation for an effective assault on in-work poverty.