Chapter 18

Child Poverty Action Group

http://www.cpag.org.uk/

This organisation helps low income families with children gain access to their full entitlement of welfare benefits, and promotes the need to eradicate poverty more generally. It contains lots of articles and information about the way policies affect low income families, and would be an important point of contact for anyone who is researching poverty in the UK.

PovertyNet

http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/index.htm

As one section of the World Bank’s website on human development, this page provides a global perspective on the impact of poverty. Although much of the material is aimed at policy-makers, it is all presented in a very user-friendly and accessible style. It’s worth following the links to find out more about issues in mapping and measuring inequality, as well as examining the results of the numerous surveys that are included.

Charles Booth Online Archive

http://booth.lse.ac.uk/

Based at the LSE, this fabulous site gives you access to the archive materials from Booth’s study of life and labour in London. It contains digitised images of 31 of his survey notebooks and the 12 poverty maps, as well as accounts of his walks with police officers through the London streets. It is always interesting to see the original data from a research project, and this site will be invaluable if you are doing historical or documentary research on poverty.

The Feminization of Poverty

http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/women.html

This site summarises the proceedings of the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. This was a highly significant event, raising awareness around the world of the global impact of poverty upon women. The themes of the conference included women’s human rights inequality and discrimination, and violence against women, A must for anyone who is interested in the gendered aspects of inequality.

The L-Curve

http://www.lcurve.org/

A mind-blowing graphical representation of income inequality in the USA. David Chandler shows how the greatest proportion of the nation’s wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few, creating a ‘vertical spike’ of income distribution. This site is worth visiting if you are interested in wealth rather than poverty, for it explains the social and political implications of being a billionaire.

International Labour Organization

http://www.ilo.org/

This is the website of the ILO, a specialist UN agency that seeks to promote equality, fair wages and social justice in the context of labour markets across the world. Here you can find information on global poverty and the impact of Fair Trade policies that have tried to counteract it, women’s experiences of poverty in different countries, and employment rights in relation to equal pay, discrimination and so on.

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Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 18.

Chapter 18