This is Brittle Britain, anxious and stressed
Poverty today is no longer about material needs. Loneliness and lack of support have become much more important
By Geoff Mulgan

A decade or so ago few imagined that poverty would become a fiercely fought political battleground. Yet party leaders today are competing hard to prove that they alone know how to reduce poverty. But beyond the rhetoric, what should they do? How should they prioritise a shrinking pot of public spending? And how should they be judged?

Yesterday the Young Foundation published a large survey that aims to describe the state of the nation. Backed by a dozen of the UK’s leading foundations, and with many leading academics and statisticians as advisers, the survey looks at what needs Britain has, which are getting better and which are getting worse.

The survey challenges many of the conventional wisdoms. The troubling message for the Government is that after 12 years in power, inequalities are widening, a huge number of teenagers remain out of education or training and 2.5 million people are still on incapacity benefit¹. For the Conservatives, however, the message of “broken Britain” is equally at odds with the facts. There is much less material poverty than a decade ago, much less crime, significantly better health and most of the measures of community — such as how much neighbours trust each other — have improved, albeit not much. Far from being a disaster area, the family remains strong, and much the most important place where most people’s needs are met.

For both main parties there are also striking messages that suggest their familiar battlegrounds are now out of date. Most of the arguments about poverty in the past have focused on material needs. Today there is still some material poverty, but psychological needs are much more important and much more challenging. Around one in five people in the UK experience mental health problems at some point in their lives. The number of prescriptions for antidepressant drugs² increased from 9 million in 1991 to 34 million in 2007.

Just as serious are what could be called psychosocial needs, our need for other people to care for us. A more individualistic society is also one with much more loneliness. Half a million pensioners spend Christmas Day alone. Our research shows that a million people have literally no one to turn to and no one who appreciates them. Many older people in cities like London are afraid to go out, and feel acutely isolated.

All of this poses quite a challenge for public policy. Being without a roof over your head brings you new rights. Having no one to talk to doesn’t. But there is little sign yet that the parties know quite how to deal with these issues. Nor would they feel comfortable acknowledging another striking finding, which is that many, from teenagers to refugees, value having a mobile phone more than they value having enough to eat.

One particularly glaring³ area of failure jumps out from the research. Britain does particularly badly in helping young people to make the transition from being a child to being an adult. Middle-class teenagers can generally rely on parents and family friends. But many other teenagers are bereft of the help they need, not least the 80,000 or so children in local authority care. If they then get into trouble with the law, a conviction can often be a one-way ticket to another crime and another conviction.

There’s also a bigger message. Everyone faces setbacks in their lives — but what makes the difference is whether we can cope, and whether we have the resilience⁴ to bounce back. It helps to have friends and family. It helps to have some assets⁵. But resilience is also an attitude of mind, and one of the fascinating findings of recent years is that resilience can be learnt.

As well as documenting needs today, we also looked at which needs could become more acute in future. Anxiety and depression are on course to double in the space of a generation. So is obesity⁶.

These, and many of the other needs we identify, aren’t so easy for the public sector to meet. Governments are quite good at distributing money or providing hospitals. But they’re not so good at providing love and care. This is territory where civil society⁷ tends to have the edge⁸: it is better at seeing people in the round, as individuals rather than as collections of problems, and, as public spending retreats, civil society is bound to have to play a bigger role. It would be fatuous⁹, though, to pretend that charity can substitute for the State. The arithmetic says it all: at the moment charities spend about £1 for every £20 that government spends.

Our survey shows that Britain is a rich country but with many poor people; a generally happy country but with many unhappy people. It’s not broken. But it is brittle¹⁰, anxious and stressed. To the public it is obvious that psychological needs are as important as material ones, that love, care, peace of mind are as vital to a good life as having enough heating or enough clothes to wear. Yet there is an odd gulf between this common knowledge and public policy. Whoever can bridge that gap may win the battle to convince the public that they understand poverty and what to do about it.
870 words
Source: TimesOnline, Dec.8, 2009
Survey on YoungFoundation


Annotations:
1. incapacity benefit - Erwerbsunfähigkeitshilfe
2. antidepressant drugs - Antidepressiva
3. glaring - eklatant, offenkundig
4. resilience - Widerstandsfähigkeit
5. assets - Vermögen, Guthaben
6. obesity - Fettleibigkeit
7. civil society - bürgerliche Gesellschaft, Zivilgesellschaft
8. to have the edge - überlegen sein
9. fatuous - illusorisch
10. brittle - leicht zerbrechlich


Assignments:
1. What does the survey mentioned in this article ascertain in respect of the issue of 'poverty' and the government's handling of it.
2. In what areas is the state bound to fail and who can do more for the peole's needs?
3. Why do you think have 'psychological needs' become a problem in the past decades?
4. What text type is this? Substantiate your opinion.
5. Do you think the same problems described in the text apply to the German society as well?