Preview: Daniel Edmiston, Lecturer at the University of Leeds, makes the case for a pluralistic approach to poverty measurement to capture heterogeneity within a broader analytical and methodological category of ‘the poor’.
The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University hosted Daniel Edmiston for a Poverty & Social Policy Seminar. Drawing on the Family Resources Survey in the United Kingdom, his research reveals an increasing depth of poverty in the UK since 2010, with women, children, larger families, Black people and those in full-time work worst affected after ten years of cuts to social protection. Official statistics tend to rely on a headcount approach to poverty measurement, distinguishing ‘the poor’ from the ‘non-poor’ on the basis of an anchored threshold and does little to engage with the gradations of material hardship affecting those living, to varying degrees, below the poverty line. Within the context of COVID-19, Edmiston makes the case for a pluralistic approach to poverty measurement to capture heterogeneity within broader analytical and methodological category of ‘the poor’.
About Daniel Edmiston
Daniel Edmiston is Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. He has undertaken national and comparative research drawing on mixed methods approaches to critically examine the distributional and discursive effects of welfare policy and politics. He has previously worked for the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, LSE and the University of Oxford. Edmiston’s research focuses primarily on poverty and inequality, comparative public policy and social citizenship. He is also Co-Investigator on Welfare at a (Social) Distance: a major UKRI-funded project investigating the response and impact of the social security system during the coronavirus crisis.
Recent Publications:
Edmiston, D. (2021). Plumbing the Depths: The Changing (Socio-Demographic) Profile of UK Poverty. Journal of Social Policy, 1-27.
Edmiston, D. (2020) 'Citizenship', in N. Ellison and T. Haux (eds.), Handbook on Society and Social Policy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Donoghue, M. & Edmiston, D. (2020) Gritty Citizens? Exploring the logic and limits of resilience in UK social policy during times of socio-material insecurity, Critical Social Policy, 40(1): 7-29.
LPTC (2019) From Poverty to Participation: Learning from Leeds Poverty Truth, Leeds: University of Leeds.
Edmiston, D. (2018) Welfare, Inequality and Social Citizenship: Deprivation and Affluence in Austerity Britain, Bristol: Policy Press.