Social Exclusion: New Concept or New Name for Poverty?

A perennial problem for policymakers and social policy researchers is that of how to define and measure poverty. A distinction is generally made between concepts of absolute and relative poverty, both of which seek to identify a universal line below which poverty is said to exist. This essay will examine why neither concept has been successful in doing this and how in recent years government has shifted the debate towards the new language of Social Exclusion….(short extract)