Rowntree Revisited: Poverty in Britain in 1900

We examine Rowntree's 1900 primary poverty line methodology and suggest that he incorporated assumptions about the needs of children and the extent of scale economies that lead him to overestimate the numbers in primary poverty. We modify Rowntree's primary poverty line using evidence from a contemporaneous household expenditure survey. The results suggest that the primary poverty head-count in York was considerably lower, at 5 to 6% of the population compared to Rowntree's 10%. Taken in conjunction with Feinstein's study of wages, this weakens the evidence for widespread poverty in Britain at the turn of the last century.