Would a relatively poor widow be better off if she were richer but still relatively poor?

A columnist in the New Zealand Herald on Monday last week argued, in response to this Policy Matters Blog, that health researchers are right to focus on inequality and relative poverty because the columnist’s widowed relative could not afford to send her 11-year old son to school camp.

However, the suggestion that it is inequality that precludes the widow’s son going to school camp is oxymoronic.  She can’t afford to send him because she doesn’t have the money, which is a matter of absolute, not relative, income.

The focus on inequality and relative poverty implies that the widow would be no better off if everyone’s incomes were quadrupled.