¹ This section is drawn from our manuscript, now in final revision for publication, The Meaning and Measurement of Poverty, Philadelphia, 1968Google Scholar, ch. II, mimeo.

² In this connection, note should be taken that it is possible, and for some purposes useful, to form a conception of poverty in global or cross-cultural terms; that is, to express a state of deprivation in terms of a value or values on which there is international agreement. But to identify such a set of values would require us to operate on a higher level of abstraction than is appropriate for our purposes.

³ The terms ‘welfare values’ and ‘deference values’ are borrowed from Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.Google Scholar ‘Welfare values’ is used here as a catch-all for things bearing upon an individual's view of himself. ‘Deference values’ is an umbrella label for things bearing upon society's (or some social segment's) view of the individual. Put another way, welfare values have to do with a person's self-perception, deference values with the way and extent to which he is taken into account in the acts of others.

⁴ One very real possibility, for instance, is that equalization of employment problems could not be achieved without raising the overall sub-employment rate to a level well above what society has refused to tolerate in the past. Strictly speaking, according to our conception achievement of equalization of the problems would mean elimination of poverty, but overall social well-being would have diminished in the process.

⁵ If a more egalitarian distribution of problems is also regarded by all concerned as more equitable, it could be argued that there has indeed been progress by any criterion. Indeed, if redistribution of income takes place unaccompanied by reduction or redistribution of problems, but is viewed by all concerned as a more equitable arrangement than previously, it could be said that poverty has thereby been reduced.

⁶ It may be noted in passing that distributive justice and elimination of poverty are not necessarily synonymous in all respects. In a poverty-free society injustice could persist along ethnic or other non-income lines. Similarly, depending upon the ethical code, individuals in a just society might be permitted to live in physical squalor.

⁷ This distinction is made by S. M. Miller in a review article of Levitan, Sar A.'s The Great Society's Poor Law: A New Approach to Poverty in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 385 (09 1969), p. 176.Google Scholar

⁸ This point is strongly suggested by Banfield, Edward, ‘Welfare: A Crisis without “Solutions”’, The Public Interest, vol. 16 (Summer 1969), pp. 89–101.Google Scholar

⁹ For comment and analysis along these lines, see especially Miller, S. M. and Roby, Pamela, The Future of Inequality, New York: Basic Books, 1970Google Scholar; Edwards, Richard C., MacEwan, Arthur et al. , ‘A Radical Approach to Economies’, American Economic Review, Supplement (05 1970)Google Scholar; and Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Walinsky, Adam, ‘Keeping the Poor in Their Place: Notes on the Importance of Being One-Up’, The New Republic (4 07 1964)Google Scholar, reprinted in Shostak, Arthur and Gomberg, William (eds), New Perspectives on Poverty, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965, pp. 159–68.Google Scholar

¹¹ For a brilliant discussion of the nature of a just society, see Runciman, W. J., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.Google Scholar

¹² Bachrach and Baratz, op. cit. p. 43.