The Wisdom of the Crowds #8: Attitudes to poverty

Taken from Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, pdf of which is here

55% think there is 'quite a lot of poverty' in Britain today, 41% think there is 'very little'

35% think poverty has increased in the last 10 years, 19% decreasing, 39% roughly the same

46% expect poverty to increase in the next 10 years, 13% decrease, 33% stay the same

32% think people living in need is an inevitable part of modern life, 28% think it is caused by laziness or lack of will power, 19% think it is caused by social injustice and 13% think it is individual bad luck

42% think government should redistribute wealth from better to worse off, 32% disagree, 24% undecided

61% think ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation's wealth, 13% disagree, 22% undecided

40% think benefit levels for unemployed people are too high and discourage them from finding jobs, 34% think they are too low and cause hardship

90% think poverty is when people don't have enough to eat and live without getting into debt, 47% think it is if they have enough to eat and live but not to buy other things that they need, 19% think it is when people have enough to buy what they really need, but not to buy the things which most people take for granted