The concept of deprivation

The concept of deprivation has exerted a major influence on poverty research since it was first used to identify poverty over three decades ago by Townsend (1979). Since then, the ideas he developed have had a profound and growing impact on how poverty research is conducted, reducing its dependence on the use of poverty lines. The basic ideas captured in the concept and measurement of deprivation have already been outlined in Chapter One. This chapter provides a more thorough discussion of the concept and presents new evidence on a key ingredient of the approach – the identification of what constitutes the essentials (or necessities) of life that form the basis for identifying deprivation.

Townsend's development of deprivation was motivated by his concern to give a richer and more nuanced empirical meaning to the concept of poverty that encompasses a more direct articulation of what poverty actually involves. This requires specification of the many dimensions in which people's needs remain unfulfilled because of a lack of resources. In what has become its classic modern formulation, Townsend defined poverty in the following way:

The important feature of deprivation embodied in this definition is that it focuses directly on the lack of access to, or participation in, those goods and activities that are necessary for people to function effectively as members of the society in which they are living. Effective functioning is interpreted broadly to cover people's ability to meet their material needs as consumers, workers, family members and citizens. By locating deprivation within a specific social context and adopting a living standards framework, the approach overcomes the limitations involved in deciding whether or not someone is poor on the basis of their income alone.