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Individualization of Poverty? An Analysis of Dynamic Poverty Studies

Cars ten Kornberg Bak

The German Sociologist Ulrich Beck is best known for his book “Risk Society” which has been discussed extensively; however Beck’s claims about modern poverty have not received the same attention among poverty researchers. The individualization perspective views poverty as a relatively transient phenomenon and the democratization perspective views the risk of poverty as spread equally in the population. Both perspectives challenge the mainstream tradition of class analysis, and therefore both view poverty as largely independent of traditional stratification factors. In this article, I argue that Beck’s thesis about the individualization and democratization of poverty is based on narrow income based definitions and that (possible) empirical verification depends on the definitions of poverty and approaches used to examine poverty. My analyses show that the dynamic perspective (using income as measure of poverty) largely supports the democratization of poverty. My other analyses of relative poverty and social exclusion do not support Beck’s argument