Government Responsibility and Response

Abstract

Previous chapters have highlighted new dimensions of poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. However, it is important to recognise the extent to which the `new poverty’ is rooted in older problems and developments that occurred prior to the 1970s. Many of the issues discussed here are related to the absence in most member states of effective ‘citizenship’ rights to a decent minimum standard of living. As the European Commission’s final report of the first Programme to Combat Poverty emphasised, the gaps in the European welfare states have remained ‘large and cavernous’ throughout the post-war period (Commission of the European Communities, 1981). This is primarily because the most elaborate and costly forms of social protection have favoured workers with regular and stable employment. In practice, they have benefited a wide middle stratum of society, while neglecting many others and leaving them poorly protected, relying mainly on national or local social assistance measures.