Older people and poverty in rural Britain: Material hardships, cultural denials and social inclusions

Abstract

This paper explores the relations between older people, poverty and place in rural Britain. It develops previous work on rural poverty that has pointed both to the significance of older people within the rural poor population and to their denials of poverty. The paper also connects with recent discussions on the complexity of relations between poverty and social exclusion in later life, as well as key themes emerging from studies of older people in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Drawing on findings from a survey of 4000 households in rural Wales and interviews with older people in poverty in three rural places, the paper provides a detailed examination of the materialities and experiences of poverty among older people in rural places. In particular, it highlights how older poor groups construct their lives in complex terms with references made to both social inclusions and exclusions. The research also points to the significance of the socio-cultural contexts of place in shaping older people's understandings of poverty in rural areas.

Introduction

“…the old and white in village England cannot even claim political recognition. Fragmented, weak and deprived of social networks, their fate is to serve-out their final years in loneliness and isolation, their silent poverty disrupted only by the occasional disappearance of further services and the social landmarks of their lives.” (Bradley, 1986, 171)

Writing about the nature of poverty in five localities in rural England, Bradley (1986) was one of the first researchers in the UK to highlight the plight of older people living in poverty in rural places. A survey of households revealed the significance of poverty among older residents in these places, with single elderly households constituting about one-third of all households living in or on the margins of poverty. More specifically, between 40 and 67 per cent of single elderly men and 45–85 per cent of single elderly women were in poverty in the study areas. Significant minorities of these older person households were also experiencing multiple forms of deprivation, particularly in terms of accessing services and retail facilities that had moved beyond their locality and ‘the degree and quality of their involvement in face-to-face interactions, reciprocity and personal relationships…were very limited’ (Bradley, 1986, 165).

Moving beyond the analysis of survey data, Bradley provided a broad critique of the marginalisation of the rural poor, and the older rural poor in particular. Previously, Newby (1985) had argued that the histories of many rural places in England were bound up with ‘poverty, exploitation, and the constraints that stem from dependence on the locally powerful’ (23). In the 1970s, Walker (1978) had sought to counter the dominance of urban constructions of poverty by highlighting common causes of poverty in urban and rural places. Bradley built on these accounts to identify two processes of marginalisation associated with contemporary rural poverty. The first related to political and media constructions of poverty, which he suggested were more concerned with spectacular events surrounding urban poverty, such as the inner-city riots of the early 1980s, than the ‘silent poverty’ of older people in rural places. Second, Bradley argued that ideologies of paternalism and self-sufficiency remained important within rural places, shaping attitudes towards and experiences of poverty, and prioritising informal systems of social support over interventions by the welfare state.

The couple of decades following the publication of Bradley's chapter witnessed relatively little research on the situations of older people in poverty in rural Britain. Further work was undertaken on rural poverty but this was concerned more with highlighting its statistical scales, social profiles and geographies than on its experiences of particular groups, such as the elderly (see Cloke et al., 1997a, Cloke et al., 1997b; Shucksmith et al., 1996). In the last five years, though, there is evidence to suggest that older people are beginning to be taken more seriously by both rural scholars and poverty researchers (see Keating, 2008; Lowe and Speakman, 2006; Cann and Dean, 2009; Dominy and Kempson, 2006). The reasons for this increased interest are rather complex but it is clear that the increasing presence of older people in rural places, national policy agendas concerning elderly poverty and UK Research Councils' research programmes on ageing have been important factors. Specific research on poverty among older people, though, has largely focused on national analyses of meta-data on poverty in later life or else has been concerned with the relations between poverty and older people in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Much less attention has been given to poverty among older people in rural places. This situation contrasts with that in US where a larger volume of research on rural elder poverty can be identified, some of which has been based on statistical analyses of official data (see Dudenhefer, 1994; Rogers, 1999) while other work has explored its experiences in rural places (see McLaughlin and Jenson, 1995; Reig, 2002).

In this paper, we seek to address this UK research gap by exploring the material situations and experiences of older people living in poverty in rural areas. We begin by providing a critical examination of recent literature that has discussed the relations between older people, poverty and place, focussing largely on studies of urban places in the UK but also including recent studies of poverty among older people in rural places in the UK and the US. Key themes from these urban and rural literatures are then explored in the context of findings from recent research on older people and poverty in rural Wales conducted by the authors. In particular, findings from a major survey of rural households in Wales are utilised to explore the material circumstances, attitudes and experiences of older people in poverty. We also utilise material from interviews with older people living in poverty in three places in rural Wales to explore in greater depth the life-worlds of the older poor in rural areas.