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Fattigdom har fået fornyet aktualitet, fordi andelen af fattige i Danmark er steget kraftigt siden 2001. Denne stigning falder tidsmæssigt sammen med indførelsen af de såkaldte "fattigdomsydelser". Det har gjort spørgsmålet om årsagerne til fattigdom påtrængende, fordi det er blevet hævdet, dels at det lave ydelsesniveau ville øge incitamentet til lønarbejde og således reducere fattigdommen, dels at det netop ville skabe fattigdom. Derfor forsøger vi i denne artikel at nuancere belysningen af årsager til fattigdom. Årsager til fattigdom opdeles traditionelt i strukturelle, kulturelle og individuelle forhold eller karakteristika, uden at kausaliteten og deres indbyrdes sammenhæng diskuteres grundigt. I artiklen skelnes mellem: makrostrukturelle forhold som fx lavkonjunktur; institutionelle forhold som fx socialpolitiske tiltag; lokalsamfundsforhold der knytter sig til det boligområde eller den egn, man er bosat i; og individuelle karakteristika, der fremtræder som kendetegn ved individet. Endelig inddrages biografi i form af livsfaser og nøglebegivenheder gennem et livsforløbs faser som fx sygdom, skilsmisse og arbejdsløshed som perioder, begivenheder eller kæder af begivenheder, der kan forklare fattigdom. Med udgangspunkt i denne opdeling vises det, hvorledes forskellige faktorer, processer eller mekanismer i to konkrete cases bidrager til at skabe fattigdom for den enkelte, men også hvordan intentioner, valg og handlinger samt tilfældigheder i de enkelte livsforløb kan have en afgørende betydning.


ENGELSK ABSTRACT:

Morten Ejrnæs and Jørgen Elm Larsen: Causes of Poverty

This article focuses on causes of poverty. Causes of poverty are normally divided into structural, cultural and individual conditions or characteristics without fully considering causality and the dynamic relationships between them. In this article we distinguish between macro structural conditions such as recession, institutional conditions such as social policy measures, local conditions related to the residential area where one lives, and individual characteris-tics. Finally we include biography in terms of life phases and constraining key events during a life course such as teenage pregnancy, illness, divorce or unemployment as periods, events or chains of events that can explain why and how poverty emerges. This perspective is shown to illustrate how different factors, processes and mechanisms contribute to throwing the individual into poverty, but also how intentions, choices, actions and coincidences in the individual's life course may have a crucial impact. This is illustrated by two case studies in which the trajectory of one's life shows how key events in the form of coincidences cause poverty. However, the analysis also shows that because of their different age, habitus and possession of various forms of capital, the two individuals examined here will develop different life trajectories and attachment to the labour market.

Key words: Poverty, causes, habitus, capital, reflexion, life trajectory.

This article discusses the 'feminization of poverty' and the hypothesis that women in Danish society are at greater risk of experiencing relative poverty (lack of resources) than men, while social disintegration and dis empowerment—social exclusion—are increasingly problems for men. On the social and personal level, women are often more capable than men of developing new life strategies, and women have created a number of 'empowerment bases' in the Danish welfare state, for example, daytime folk high schools and local social experimental projects.

The paper explores recent developments in Australian and Danish unemployment policies with a special focus on the technologies used to classify and categorize unemployed people on government benefits. Using governmentality as our theoretical framework, we consider the implications of reducing complex social problems to statistical scores and differentiated categories — forms of knowledge that diminish the capacity to think about unemployment as a collective problem requiring collective solutions. What we argue is that classification systems, which are part and parcel of welfare state administration, are becoming more technocratic in the way in which they divide the population into different categories of risk.

The Danish Welfare State analyzes a broad range of areas, such as globalization, labor marked, family life, health and social exclusion, the book demonstrates that life in a modern welfare state is changing rapidly, creating both challenges and possibilities for future management

The objective of the article is twofold: 1) to give an empirical picture of the state of affairs with regard to socio-economic and wider socio-cultural and political inclusion of immigrants in the Danish welfare society; 2) to discuss and theorise over the links and possible dilemmas posed by the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition with the Danish case as a point of departure. In a comparative perspective, the Danish welfare state and the 'Nordic Welfare model' are in many aspects – redistribution, unemployment, poverty reduction, gender equality and economic competitiveness – regarded, if not as an ideal, then at least as a practical example of a society in which a comparatively (e.g. compared to the US and UK) high socio-economic equality and social citizenship standard is successfully combined with high market economic efficiency. However, with regard to the political discourse (right-wing anti-immigration populism has emerged since the nineties), legal rights and wider socio-cultural and socio-economic inclusion capacity of immigrants and refugees, the 'rosy' picture of the inclusive character of the Danish welfare society has been seriously challenged in recent years. Stricter policies on immigration have been implemented, and the Danish social security and employment policy measures in relation to immigrants and refugees have been changed. On the one hand, these changes have been driven by a strong 'work first' and 'dependency culture/incentive' discourse which has led to a reduction of the duration and level of social benefits and increased poverty among immigrants. On the other hand, other policy changes have pointed towards a more inclusive direction in such fields as education policy, active labour market policy measures and in innovative empowerment programmes in deprived urban districts.

There have been major shifts in the framework of social policy and welfare across Europe. Adopting a multi-level, comparative and interdisciplinary approach, this book develops a critical analysis of policy change and welfare reform in Europe. The book applies a dynamic and change oriented perspective to shed light on policy changes that are often poorly understood in the welfare literature, and contributes to a further development of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for understanding social change. Using citizenship as a focus, several dimensions of change are analysed simultaneously: changes in the discipline of social policy itself; the changing character of social problems; changes in social policy and citizenship; and the emergence of new forms of social integration. The book also speculates on how different dimensions of change are interlinked