Poor people, poor areas or poor policy and delivery?
The experience of living in a bad area exacerbates poverty and the area affects more than the people who can be identified as poor as all who live in the area are disadvantaged by their experiences and command over resources.
Social scientists have operationalised poverty principally as a property of individuals, families and households but the proposition that areas can be poor depends not on the aggregation of individual circumstances but on the processes in the area as a whole.
Much economic development and regeneration activity operates almost independently from poverty and welfare policies (indeed often contradicts them) but the case for a more holistic or ecological approach in both policy research and delivery has been articulated under the NRU.
The language of deprived areas and socially excluded individuals (wrongly groups!) has led to some exciting policy experimentation including a wide range of area based initiatives that have made a difference to some peoples lives.
Check where you stand on linking area based and individual poverty interventions and the challenge of the ecological fallacy!