Characterising Poverty in Place: Benefits Receipt in Britain

This chapter focuses on the relationship between poverty, benefits, and housing. We provide an overview of the wider context of benefits receipt in the UK, followed by analysis of poverty, place, and benefits in the Daily Mail and the Guardian. Whilst a relationship between poverty and benefits was expected, the occurrence of housing as a primary component of newspaper coverage of poverty was somewhat surprising. We show how the London-centric nature of the two newspapers skews debates about poverty and demonstrate how the different aspects of poverty and place we have identified correlate statistically.