Public attitudes to poverty

Introduction
Income security
Protection for asylum-seekers
Gender and race equality
Public attitudes to poverty
Giving people living in poverty a voice

At Oxfam, our experience shows us that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond an individual’s control: things such as your gender, your nationality, or where you live.

Seventy per cent of Bangladeshi children in the UK grow up in poverty – that’s not a choice. Nor do women working part-time choose to earn nearly 40 per cent less than men. Asylum-seekers do not choose to be one of the poorest groups in the UK.

When the odds are stacked against you its easy to see why some people are poor. That’s why Oxfam is working to change public attitudes about poverty – to ensure that people living in poverty are treated with dignity and respect and to create public pressure for action to end poverty.

Fight UK Poverty on Facebook

Next time you're searching for old friends or writing on walls on Facebook, why not have a look at Oxfam's group End UK Poverty and Inequality Now.

Millions of people all around us in the UK don’t have enough money to live on, struggling more than the rest of us to get a proper education, a decent job and make real choices about what they want to do with their lives. And to top it off, most of them face being looked down upon and discriminated against because of their situation. The group gives fellow Facebookers a space to voice their opinions and share ideas about how to change negative attitudes towards poverty and inequality in the UK. So far about 1000 members have read, joined, posted, discussed and signed the campaigns to tackle discrimination across the country.

Join the group and find out more (link to Facebook. You will need to sign up to Facebook to join the group).