Poverty in Britain, 1900-65

How was poverty measured and defined, and how has this influenced our judgement of the change in poverty in Britain during the first 60 years of the twentieth century? During this period, a large number of poverty surveys were carried out, the methods pf which altered after the Second World War. Commencing with Rowntree's social survey of York in 1899 and ending with Abel-Smith and Townsend's Poor and the Poorest 1965, Ian Gazeley shows how the means of evaluation and causes of poverty changed.