Inventing our future Collective action for a sustainable economy

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Chapter 2 – An overview of social exclusion
i) Barriers to escaping poverty and social exclusion through work
The main barriers include:
• caring responsibilities
• quality of work and low pay
• over-indebtedness
• access to transport
• sickness, disability and poor mental health
• availability of childcare
• a lack of skills and qualifications
• English language proficiency
• discrimination.
Discrimination can be a major barrier to employment because of race, sex, age, sexual orientation or mental
health, but it also cuts across many of the other barriers identified above.
Caring responsibilities
Almost 10% of the region’s population are acting as unpaid carers, with 3% providing care for more than
20 hours per week and 2% for more than 50 hours per week (Census 2001).
Quality of work and low pay
The rise of a dual labour market in the region, with an increasing number of high level occupations at one end
of the spectrum and low paid, lower level occupations at the other, means that people can become trapped in
insecure work, with low wages and poor terms and conditions.
• A growing body of evidence points to the fact that low pay and job insecurity can have a detrimental effect
on people’s well-being.
• Evidence suggests that insecure workers are actually worse off in terms of health than those who are
long-term unemployed (‘Degrees of Exclusion: developing a dynamic, multi-dimensional measure’,
Burchardt et al, in Hills et al [eds], Understanding Social Exclusion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Almost 30% of those living in poverty live in working households. The working poor represent a larger
group than the unemployed or pensioner poor (Facts About Low Pay, Low Pay Unit, 2004).
• A full-time worker with a non-working partner would need to earn around £9 per hour to avoid income
poverty. Five industries fail to do this for men, and around half fail to do this for women (Poverty & Social
Inclusion in Rural Areas, New Policy Institute for OSEP, 2004).
• Low paid workers are unlikely to receive any job-related training which would help move them into a higher
paid job in future (Poverty & Social Inclusion in Rural Areas, New Policy Institute for OSEP, 2004).
Tackling low pay is essential because poverty and low pay are intertwined throughout an individual’s lifetime
and across generations. Therefore, we must be concerned not simply about jobs at any price but also about
the quality and conditions of employment.