New poverty and social exclusion in Europe
Research
In the late 1970s, responding to the oil price shock, rising unemployment, and changing family structures, the European Commission launched a succession of anti-poverty initiatives. These included both national research studies and local action-research projects (combining new initiatives with research evaluation).
The risk of poverty was shifting from elderly people towards working-age families with children, and the Commission was seeking to understand and respond to these changes, sometimes labelled as ‘new poverty’.
Prof Graham Room, funded by the Commission, evaluated these projects and subsequently led the European Observatory on National Policies to Combat Social Exclusion (1990-94). This work led the way in UK and European research on social exclusion, and created the foundation for our subsequent work on sustainable livelihoods.
Impact
- The 1987 study of New Poverty in the European Community, subsequently published as a book by Macmillan (Room, 1990), responded to an urgent call from Jacques Delors, President of the Commission, for information about the new face of poverty amidst Europe’s prosperity.
- O’Higgins and Jenkins (1989), Poverty in Europe, provided estimates of the numbers in poverty in the member states of the European Community (as known at the time), stimulating Eurostat (the Statistical Office of the Commission) to begin a sustained and more ambitious programme of such estimates which continues to the present day.
- Our evaluation of the European Poverty Programme of 1985-89, using a network of twelve national experts, formed the basis for the Commission’s own report to the Council of Ministers (European Commission, 1991).
