Renée van Schoonhoven & Ruut Veenhoven
Paper presented at the XII World Congress of Sociology, Madrid, July 1990,
Working Group 6: Social Indicators Session 8: Poverty and Well-Being
ABSTRACT
In the early 1980’s the idea of ’new poverty’ emerged. According to this idea the gap
between rich and poor widens in affluent western nations, and ever more citizens are
believed to drop below the poverty line. It is assumed this development creates a bipartition
of society. This is deemed a threat to social peace and harmful for people at the
bottom.
This paper checks the implied claim that the quality of life has deteriorated in the
lowest income bracket. It does so by considering life satisfaction. It is inspected whether
1) the relatively poor are really less happy- and whether such a difference is due to any
objective deprivation - and 2) whether the difference in happiness between rich and poor
has actually increased. For that purpose the data of the Eurobarometer surveys over the
years 1973-1986 are analyzed. It appears that indeed there is a modest difference in
happiness between rich and poor in the EC countries. This difference however, has not
increased lately.