Where should finite resources be targeted when tackling poverty? To answer this question, this article draws on new analysis of the largest nationally representative household panel study in the UK to explore what bearing shallower and deeper forms of poverty have on financial trajectories, as well as health and well-being over time. While distinguishing between those above and below the relative poverty line has clear analytical and empirical value, our results show that this approach risks obscuring important dynamics and outcomes associated with varying degrees of poverty. In line with previous studies, we find that income increases improve health and well-being. However, we also find that deep poverty as a social kind is considerably and consistently harder to escape, as well as more damaging to mental health well-being, loneliness and life satisfaction. Crucially, transient experiences of deep poverty also prove more damaging than chronic, shallower forms of poverty. As such, we present evidence of distinct and profound effects of deep poverty that offer new grounds upon which to justify, time and target policy interventions across the low-income distribution. We employ income-based, material deprivation, and multidimensional measures of poverty, with the latter providing the most robust results for identifying the distinctive nature of deep poverty. The evidence presented helps establish an empirically informed case for Minimum Income Schemes (MIS) and the relatively superior returns on public social spending these could offer on both prioritiarian and consequentialist grounds.
Alcañiz-Colomer et al. (Sun,) studied this question.