Poverty Monitor 1999

The Poverty Monitor 1999 (Armoedemonitor 1999) presents as complete and up-to-date a picture as possible of poverty in the Netherlands, and thus provides a factual basis for the debate on poverty. The Netherlands Institute for Social Research/SCP and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) have together collected and analysed a large amount of data on poverty. The findings are set out in this publication. The report also evaluates some aspects of the policy on poverty. The following central questions are addressed:

• How many people in the Netherlands are poor?
• Has the number of poor people in the Netherlands grown over time?
• Do the poor live in less favourable conditions?
• Does poverty affect certain groups, such as lone-parent families, people living alone, members of ethnic minorities or current and former students?
• Is there any evidence of feminisation of poverty?
• Do households remain in poverty for a long period? Can any patterns be identified here?
• In which urban districts are the long-term poor concentrated?
• Does finding work enable people to escape permanently from poverty?
• Has the growth in employment in the 1990s led to a falling poverty rate?
• What impact has recent policy on poverty had on the number of poor people?
• What do people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods themselves think about the local poverty policy?

CBS and SCP have compiled a separate publication on measuring poverty.