In Defense of Poverty

A new Slate piece on how to measure poverty makes a couple of good points about the meaning of poverty:

Adam Smith put his finger on the problem back in 1776. In The Wealth of Nations, he wrote: "A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessity of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt. ..."

Smith's point is not that poverty is relative but that it is a social construction. A person can lack the money necessary to participate in society. Whatever Eurostat may say, people don't become poor just because the median citizen receives a pay raise, but they may become poor if something they cannot afford—such as an Internet connection—becomes viewed as a social essential.

That is why a new unofficial poverty threshold, published this month by—appropriately—the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, makes more sense than it at first appears. The standard was set by focus groups working out what was and was not necessary "to participate in society." The results are frugal—there is a budget of £40 ($80) every two years to buy a suit, for instance—but they were always bound to be controversial. The list of essentials includes a self-catering vacation, a cell phone, and enough booze to get drunk twice a month.

But the new threshold's apparent weakness—its subjectivity—is in fact its strength. Poverty is not relative, and it cannot be objectively determined by an expert. Adam Smith understood that very well.

I agree that poverty is in some respects a social construction, and Smith's observation is right on the mark, but I dread the day when we try to eliminate poverty based on what it takes "to participate in society". To even begin to explore what that means would seem to nudge us further towards the bland middle-class ideal that America is already too fond of. Poverty is indeed a problem that calls for much charity. But to go about trying to eliminate all class differences is something different, and far more dangerous an impulse. We'd be losing something beautiful if we killed The Old Cumberland Beggar:

Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now;
He travels on, a solitary Man,
So helpless in appearance, that for him
The sauntering Horseman throws not with a slack
And careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops,--that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old Man's hat; nor quits him so,
But still, when he has given his horse the rein,
Watches the aged Beggar with a look
Sidelong, and half-reverted.