Authors: Sarah Halpern-Meekin.
Overview
Social poverty comes from lacking high-quality, trustworthy, dependable relationships. This is distinct from the experience of financial poverty and has consequences for wellbeing. Without adequately recognizing the multidimensional nature of human needs, we cannot understand individuals’ behavior and motivations, nor can we develop policies that successfully respond to their needs.
Keywords: social poverty, social capital, social isolation.
Who you know matters, sociologists have shown time and again. Need a loan? Need a job referral? Need a place to crash in a housing crunch? A wealth of research has established how social capital shapes individual outcomes and patterns of social stratification. Yet, for all of the attention shown to wealth and poverty—that can come from social ties (or the lack thereof)—researchers often fail to appreciate the ways in which relationships themselves are a resource.
This was a short summary of the original article
which can be downloaded in full as a PDF below
