Anthony Giddens • Sociology 6th edition

Student Resources

Chapter 12 — Poverty, Social Exclusion and Welfare

1. Which one of these countries had a child poverty rate below 15% in 2000?
   a) Poland
   b) Britain
   c) Portugal
   d) Italy
2. Extreme poverty is often defined as living on less than US$1 per day. How has extreme poverty changed between 1981 and 2004?
   a) stayed the same, around 1.5 billion people
   b) rose from 1.5 billion people to 3 billion
   c) fell from 1.5 billion people to 1 billion
   d) rose from 1.5 billion people to 2.5 billion
3. The European Community standard defines poverty as those households living on or below 60% of median income. On this measure, what percentage of the 25 countries of the EU was at risk of poverty in 2005?
   a) 10%
   b) 24%
   c) 7.5%
   d) 17%
4. Explanations of poverty fall into two types: ‘blame the victim’ or ‘blame the system’. Which one of the following is an example of the former?
   a) William Julius Wilson (1996) When Work Disappears
   b) Will Hutton (1995) The State We’re In
   c) Charles Murray (1990) The Emerging British Underclass
   d) Ruth Lister (2004) Poverty
5. Social exclusion refers to ‘ways in which people are cut off from full involvement in society’. How has Veit-Wilson (1998) distinguished the main variants of this concept?
   a) primary/secondary
   b) weak/strong
   c) general/specific
   d) old/new
6. Put these stages in the ‘evolution’ of citizenship in chronological order.
   a) civil rights; political citizenship; social citizenship; environmental citizenship
   b) social citizenship; political citizenship; environmental citizenship; civil rights
   c) political citizenship; social citizenship; environmental citizenship; civil rights
   d) civil rights; environmental citizenship; social citizenship; political citizenship
7. According to Esping-Andersen, France is an example of which type of welfare regime?
   a) liberal
   b) conservative-corporatist
   c) republican
   d) social democratic
8. In which decade did the post-war consensus break down and governments in the UK and USA embark on a programme to ‘roll back’ the welfare state?
   a) 1960s
   b) 1970s
   c) 1980s
   d) 1990s
9. Which of the following was not part of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ politics in 1997?
   a) strengthening of civil society
   b) an expansion of universal welfare benefits
   c) a focus on social exclusion not inequality
   d) use of the private sector in public service provision
10. In which country did the poorest quintile receive the smallest share of national revenue in 2007?
    a) USA
    b) Egypt
    c) Kenya
    d) Pakistan
11. The 2000 Poverty and Social Exclusion survey showed that the proportion of people in the UK vulnerable to poverty was:
    a) less than 1%
    b) 2%
    c) 5%
    d) 10%
    
12. Critics of the concept of relative poverty argue that:
    a) it concentrates too much on kinship ties
    b) the government should be raising benefit levels
    c) in modern affluent societies no one is truly poor
    d) it is wrong to make comparisons between countries
13. Median earnings are a better benchmark for poverty than mean earnings because:
    a) the mean is distorted by a few people at the very top of the distribution
    b) they lead more people to be defined as in poverty
    c) the median is a more accurate measurement of earnings than the mean
    d) all of the above
14. Which of the following did not appear in Townsend’s 1979 deprivation index?
    a) going without a cooked meal in the previous fourteen days
    b) living in a household without a refrigerator
    c) not having access to a washing machine in the household
    d) not having fresh meat at least four days of the week
15. Children living in poverty tend to be more likely:
    a) to be killed in a road accident
    b) to have a diet consisting primarily of vegetables
    c) to live in male-headed households
    d) none of the above
16. Which of these ethnic groups has the greatest proportion of its members in the bottom income quintile?
    a) Whites
    b) Indians
    c) Black Caribbeans
    d) Pakistani/Bangladeshis
17. Which of these is not an example of social exclusion?
    a) tax avoidance
    b) gated communities
    c) homelessness
    d) none of the above
18. The notion of citizenship rights is associated with:
    a) T. H. Huxley
    b) A. H. Halsey
    c) T. H. Marshall
    d) E. H. Carr
19. Which of these constitute the three worlds of welfare capitalism?
    a) social democratic, socialist, communist
    b) social democratic, corporatist, liberal
    c) social democratic, christian-democratic, nationalist
    d) none of the above
20. The attempt to roll back the welfare state in Britain was ultimately only partially achieved because:
    a) there was insufficient budget to push through the proposed policies
    b) welfare provision in the United States has become residualized
    c) a network of interest groups mobilized in support of welfare
    d) the welfare state was created in a period of full employment

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