Creating Unequal Futures?: Rethinking Poverty, Inequality and Disadvantage

by Peter Saunders

One in six Australian kids live below the poverty line. Among the 25 leading industrialized countries, Australia has the fifth highest child poverty rate. This is a useful, if stark, indicator of the extent of long-term disadvantage in this country. Creating Unequal Futures? brings together eight of Australia's leading social scientists to introduce the reader to the processes that create and sustain persistent patterns of poverty and disadvantage. Although the contributors use different approaches, their research leads to a united call for a rethinking away from the prevailing “gloom and doom” presentations of Australian material life. They signal pathways out of the dilemmas that bind people to poverty and disadvantage. If followed, those pathways will guide us to a future characterized by less inequality. If ignored, we may further entrench patterns of disadvantage and risk creating unequal futures for all Australians.

268 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001