Search

This paper draws upon literature from economics, and the human capital and equity fields in order to present a theoretical framework for a new multidimensional measure of poverty for Australia. Poverty is about having low living standards; but its measurement has traditionally focused only on an individual's income or on other dimensions of living standards that are not appropriate for contemporary Australian society, such as calorie intake. There are two additional capabilities individuals require for adequate living standards: health and education. Each of these is required for basic functioning within modern society, but have traditionally been ignored by measures of poverty. This paper argues that health is a basic capability people need for a fulfilling life, allowing individuals to participate in activities essential in modern society, and that education can also be seen in this light. As such it is vital that health and education be included in measures of poverty. In order to move Australian poverty measurement forward and build upon the work of the past, poverty measurement must move its focus away from only looking at low income, and take a holistic focus on the living standards of individuals by incorporating assessments of health and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education policy intervention for schools in high poverty neighbourhoods has focused on the capacity of local schools to make a difference and on the kinds of co-ordinated human services provision that might support individual families with “high needs”. In this paper I suggest that a more detailed analysis of “the problem” represented in such schools might yield a richer and more integrated policy approach. I use the notion of “scale”, arbitrary and imperfect approximations of spheres of activity, and apply it to a specific context in Adelaide, South Australia, to demonstrate the connections between the local school and factors which impinge on its capacities to make a positive difference. I suggest that the implication of the analysis is a more holistic approach to policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of pedagogical relationships offer insights into policies and practices which have the capacity to promote progressive change in educational practice for children in poverty This paper focus on relationships established in three differently-located Australian primary schools. Greytown a medium sized inner-city school in New South Wales, Manger, a large suburban school in Queensland, and Meiks, a small rural school in New South Wales Each school is a designated disadvantage school and finded according through accordingly through a fedral Disadvantage Schools Program, is located in working class area and is ethincally diverse. The schools' pedagogical response to children in poverty are contrasted and analysed in terms of their capacity to contribute to socially just outcome from schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the newly created Freedom Poverty Measure, a multidimensional measure of poverty, it can be seen that there were 534,700 individuals who were in freedom poverty, who had either poor health or poor education in addition to having low incomes. This multidimensional disadvantage would not normally be captured by single measures of poverty, such as income poverty measures. Men were significantly less likely to be in freedom poverty than women (OR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.54–0.74, p < .0001), and the proportion of individuals in freedom poverty increased with age, with those older than 85 being 2.3 times more likely to be in freedom poverty than those aged 65 to 69 years (95% CI: 1.73–3.11, p < .0001). Policy responses to address the marginalization of disadvantaged older people should take a multidisciplinary approach, addressing health inequalities in particular, not just low income. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article highlights Disadvantaged Schools Program (DSP), a compensatory education for children in poverty. Programs of "compensatory education" for children in poverty were set up in a number of affluent Western countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Little known outside Australia, the Disadvantaged Schools Program (DSP) is one of the few compensatory education programs to operate on a national scale. During the 1950s and 1960s Australian education systems had expanded at breakneck pace, riding an industrial boom and driven by enormous increases in demand at secondary and tertiary level. The idea of a targeted poverty program in education was drawn from the United States and Great Britain, traditionally the two main sources of ideas for Australian education. The result of this conjuncture was that the Disadvantaged Schools Program had a framework derived mainly from overseas poverty programs--it was targeted on a minority and had "compensatory" justification--but also had distinctive local features. First, it was based on the school as its unit of action, not the individual disadvantaged child.