Time and poverty revisited: A replication of Leisering and Leibfried

Abstract

In the late 1990s, the German sociologists Leisering and Leibfried (1999) argued that most poverty is of a temporary nature. In their poverty study in the German city of Bremen, Leisering and Leibfried found that more than half of all social assistance claimants were out of poverty within a year. Based on their work, individualization theorists such as Giddens and Beck argue that ‘for most people poverty is only a temporary experience’. This article replicates Leisering and Leibfried’s study using statistical data about social assistance claiming in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In doing so we find significant numbers of short-term claimants (about 30 percent), as well as surprisingly large numbers of long-term claimants. One in four Rotterdam social assistance claimants is poor for at least 5 years – more than twice as many as Leisering and Leibfried found in their study. We also show that recurrent benefit spells, for Leisering and Leibfried another typical feature of contemporary poverty, is only the exception in Rotterdam. Leisering and Leibfried (and sociologists such as Giddens and Beck in their footsteps) are wrong in claiming that short poverty experiences are typical for poverty in late-modern society. Persistent poverty is still present in our age and in our cities.