Social Exclusion: Challenges for Research and Implications for Policy

Social exclusion is influencing how social policy issues are conceived, debated, researched and addressed, particularly in Europe. It has also been given prominence as a focus of the Rudd Government's social policy agenda. This paper reviews the debate over the definition and measurement of social exclusion, focusing on its relationship with poverty, defined in terms of low-income. The analysis is based on the premise that conceptual and measurement issues can play an important role in identifying causation, and thus point to the kinds of actions needed to address the problem. The argument is illustrated by drawing on recent Australian research that shows that exclusion takes many different but often inter-connected forms, and that there is a low degree of overlap between exclusion and poverty. The implications of the findings for research and policy are briefly discussed.