3 Attitudes to the poor and poverty

A report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust looked at public attitudes to the poor and poverty using data from the British Social Attitudes survey http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1999-poverty-attitudes-survey.pdf . In summary, I think this survey shows that the majority of British people are sympathetic to those people living in some form of absolute poverty, such as those suffering inadequate nutrition or being unable to sustain life without going into debt but not towards those in relative poverty. Attitudes to the poor also seem to be hardening, as in the latest British Social Attitudes survey, one-third of the 3,000 people interviewed believed that poverty was "an inevitable part of modern life" and a rising number laid the blame on the poor themselves; 27% of those surveyed thinking that poverty was due to "laziness or lack of willpower", up from 19% in 1984. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/23/socialexclusion