Gregg M. Olsen - Poverty and Austerity amid Prosperity: A Comparative Introduction

Gregg Olsen brilliantly deconstructs the individualistic conceptions of poverty routinely rehearsed in academic studies and government reports. He shows that poverty is rooted in systemic dynamics of contemporary capitalism and that uprooting it requires broad change to the direction of economic democracy. Rigorously argued and researched, clearly and elegantly written, this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about an urgent and pressing issue of our time.

Joel Bakan, University of British Columbia

For two decades Gregg Olsen has been one of my go-to authors for understanding the source of social and health inequalities in Canada and elsewhere. In this book, Olsen turns his sharp eye to the poverty situation in Canada, the UK, and the US. In addition to documenting the sources and effects of public policies that create poverty, Olsen provides ways of transcending the problematic present.

Dennis Raphael, York University

In bringing together the issues of poverty and homelessness, this book deals with two of the most pressing issues of our time. It combines rich historical detail with a clear focus on the future and what might be done to address these issues. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why poverty persists in some of the wealthiest nations of the world.

Tracy Shildrick, Newcastle University

Gregg Olsen has written a powerful book that clearly articulates the meanings of poverty, major theoretical accounts, and empirics across Canada, the UK, and the US. Highly accessible, rigorous, and erudite, this book is simply the best social science on poverty in contemporary liberal capitalist societies in years.

Larry W. Isaac, Vanderbilt University

All countries could do better at reducing poverty if they had universal, generous, employment-supporting social programs. But Gregg Olsen shows us in this valuable book that even in nations with a modest welfare state, such as Canada, the UK, and the US, policy choices can make a big difference.

Lane Kenworthy, University of California, San Diego

University of Toronto Press 2021
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ISBN 978-1-4875-0984-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4875-0985-9 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-4875-0987-3 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-1-4875-0986-6 (PDF)

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Poverty and austerity amid prosperity : a comparative introduction/Gregg M. Olsen.

Names: Olsen, Gregg M. (Gregg Matthew), 1956 author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021021547X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210215526 | ISBN 9781487509859 (paper) | ISBN 9781487509842 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487509873 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487509866 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Poverty Canada. | LCSH: Poverty Great Britain. | LCSH: Poverty United States.

Classification: LCC HC79.P6 O47 2021 | DDC 362.5 dc23

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University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

To Leo Panitch

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable NUMBER !

Shake your chains to the earth, like dew

Which in sleep had falln on you:

Y E ARE MANY THEY ARE FEW .

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819

Illuminating and instructive poverty studies are continually generated by prominent, highly respected research centers in the United States and across the globe. They typically chronicle changes in the magnitude and severity of poverty within a particular nation and over relatively short time frames, often highlighting demographic groups that are disproportionately represented among the poor. They also point to crucial catalysts that have helped to aggravate and sustain high poverty levels, such as high levels of unemployment, low wages, inadequate social supports, and low levels of education and training in critical growth areas of the economy. However vital, these studies also have notable limitations. They typically assume a familiarity and common understanding of what constitutes poverty and neglect to consider homelessness, one of the harshest and most desperate forms of destitution. As single-country case studies, they miss the often vastly different poverty profiles across the nations of the wealthy capitalist world and how and why these nations address poverty in such markedly different ways and with starkly different levels of success. Consequently, these studies tend, at least implicitly, to resign themselves to the Bibles bleak prediction that the poor will always be with us, and they do not directly address the apparent paradox of poverty amid prosperity. Other poverty narratives set their sights on elucidating some of the most critical aspects and dimensions of poverty, including technical accounts of how it is defined and measured. Or they provide a somewhat abstract overview of the dominant theoretical approaches that have been advanced to explain poverty without examining its actual manifestation in any nation or providing the necessary data to illustrate and substantiate the insightful discussions and controversies these studies generate.

As an alternative, this volume provides a comprehensive but accessible one-stop introduction to the study of poverty from a range of comparative vantage points, highlighting the impact of poverty on individuals, families, communities, and society. It begins with the observation that scholarly attention to poverty and homelessness in wealthy nations has been overwhelmed and largely displaced by the accelerating torrent of compelling studies of surging income and wealth disparities across the advanced capitalist world over the past decade. It then explores both the inclusive and the narrow ways that poverty and homelessness have been conceptualized, and how this shapes the way they are defined, measured, and addressed across nations. Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, for example the three countries spotlighted in this study measure and track poverty and homelessness very differently than do many European nations. But the dominant central and supplemental poverty measures employed across this trio of Anglo nations also differ markedly from each other, rendering direct, meaningful contrasts of their national data sets difficult. A close examination of poverty and homelessness in each country, one based on each nations own official or quasi-official definitions and forms of measurement, is a very useful