IN FOCUS: POVERTY

As the climate crisis deepens, ordinary people are taking on its costs. Australia must reconfigure its society and tackle inequality if it is to have any hope of meeting the challenges of the future, John Falzon writes.

New ways of measuring and tackling poverty are making crucial progress, but the scale of the problem is large, and many challenges and negative trends remain. Addressing these will be crucial to ending poverty, Sharon Bessell writes.

New research shows that dangerously low Centrelink payments are driving people into poverty and putting them at risk of homelessness, and the government must do more, Sophie Trevitt writes.

While cuts to benefits and the new universal credit system have caused many problems in the UK, their negative effect on women is especially problematic, Fran Bennett writes.

The Individual Deprivation Measure offers policymakers a chance to truly understand the multi-dimensionality of poverty, providing insights into deprivation’s unique characteristics at different stages in life, Angie Bexley and Mandy Yap write.

Rural areas are home to many people who live in poverty. Compounding the issue is power – access to energy can unlock a better future for rural residents, Shenggen Fan and Channing Arndt write.

On this week’s Policy Forum Pod, we look at tackling poverty in Australia: how we should measure it; what’s causing it; why there seems precious little political will to address it; and what policies we could put in place that would make an immediate difference.

On October 14, ATD Fourth World launched Understanding Poverty in All its Forms, the report of its collaborative research project with Oxford University. The research is being undertaken to build a consensus around defining and measuring poverty - with the aim of eradicating it. The research is a genuine participatory partnership between researchers, academics, and people with firsthand experiences of poverty. Moraene Roberts is a member of the National Coordinating Team of ATD Fourth World UK. Here, Moraene writes powerfully about the experience of poverty.

The link between homelessness and poverty is well known, but evidence of its relationship over time is only just emerging. As it is deeply entrenched in disadvantage and housing insecurity, responses to homelessness must be re-thought and scaled-up, James O’Donnell writes.

The ability to manage a period hygienically and safely is crucial, and our policies are beginning to reflect this. However, an approach to end the shame associated with menstruation has to be the next step, Dani Barrington writes.