Introduction and overview

This chapter provides an overview of three of the main forms of social disadvantage — poverty, deprivation, and exclusion. It discusses what these terms mean, how we think about them, how we measure them, how they related to each other, and what needs to be done about them. It draws on international (mainly European) ideas and policy debates and although the evidence presented is Australian, the arguments, findings, and their interpretation apply more generally. It explores the similarities and differences between poverty, deprivation, and exclusion and identifies the factors that connect them together in circumstances, in order to understand the nature of social disadvantage in modern societies like Australia.