Poverty in Britain, 1900-1965

How was poverty measured and defined, and how has this influenced our judgement of the change in poverty in Britain during the first sixty years of the twentieth century? During this period, a large number of poverty surveys were carried out, the methods of which altered after World War II. Commencing with Rowntree's social survey of York in 1899 and ending with Abel-Smith and Townsend's Poor and the Poorest in 1965, Ian Gazeley shows how the means of evaluation and the causes of poverty ch...