Escape from Poverty' and Occupations

This paper considers an approach to studying the concept of poverty by using data on occupations as indirect measures of poverty. It presents a number of candidate measures which are based on data on occupations, and compares their properties and analytical qualities with alternative measures of poverty (based upon income). The analysis is motivated by the sociological axiom that occupations matter, more than any other factor, in defining individuals' own life experiences, and in defining the very contours of social structure and inequality. We present a number of results to justify this position. We argue that sociological evidence on how the distribution of social advantage and disadvantage is related to occupations should be leveraged to consider occupation-based measures of poverty. It is an open question whether the social significance of occupations translates to their helpfulness in the analysis of poverty. There are substantial differences between the results of analysis using occupation-based and income-based measures of poverty, and we recognise that there are many scenarios where an occupation-based measure may not be at all useful. Typically, occupation-based measures generate a more stable, pessimistic account of the persistence of social disadvantage and poverty. Accordingly, we construct an argument that the evidence on social inequality derived from studying occupations is persuasive, and a sounder basis for policy decisions concerned with social exclusion and social justice, than is the evidence provided by income-based poverty indicators.