Cumulative Disadvantage or Individualization? A Comparative Analysis of Poverty Risk and Incidence

In this paper we seek to clarify and examine empirically two related perspectives on poverty processes that have emerged in recent years - those of cumulative disadvantage and of individualization. Both offer a challenge to the mainstream tradition of class analysis, which directs our attention to a set of differentiated relationships between class positions and life-chances. The cumulative disadvantage perspective defines the key cleavage as between a comfortable majority and a multiply disadvantaged minority excluded from the mainstream. The individualization perspective views poverty as a relatively transient phenomenon, which is largely independent of traditional stratification factors. Our analysis of the impact of class origins, education, current class and unemployment in four European counties did find evidence of increased poverty risk associated with cumulative disadvantage and of persisting net effects. However, in all four countries those experiencing disadvantage in relation to all four factors constituted a negligible proportion of the poor. In relation to the individualization perspective, we found no evidence that the differential between social classes in their risk of poverty had decreased over time. Furthermore, analysis conducted across twelve European countries showed that class origin, education, current class and long-term unemployment were powerful predictors of poverty duration even after controlling for household type and divorce/separation. Our analysis therefore supports neither over determination nor under determination arguments relating to the causes of poverty. Instead it shows that that while variables such as unskilled manual class origins have substantial, and to some extent, persisting effects on the risk of poverty, most poor people are not cumulatively disadvantaged. Traditional stratification variables combine with other factors in an additive and interactive fashion in the complex processes that determine poverty outcomes. Class effects can be significant across a range of outcomes, and stable over time, without any suggestion that we are in all cases identifying the same individuals. A crucial implication of the mainstream class perspective is that it directs attention away from highly targeted policies aimed at multiply deprived groups and points to the need for more generalized responses directed at groups who are not necessarily currently poor but whose vulnerability to such exposure means that a range of factors may precipitate such an outcome.