The poor and the poorest, 50 years on: evidence from British Household Expenditure surveys of the 1950s and 1960s

We re-explore Abel-Smith and Townsend’s landmark study of poverty in early post WW2 Britain. They found a large increase in poverty between 1953-4 and 1960, a period of relatively strong economic growth. Our re-examination is a first exploitation of the data extracted from the recent digitisation of the Ministry of Labour’s Enquiry into Household Expenditure in 1953-4. First we closely replicate their results. We find that Abel-Smith and Townsend’s method generated a greater rise in poverty than other reasonable methods. Using contemporary standard poverty lines, we find that the relative poverty rate grew only a little at most, and the absolute poverty rate fell, between 1953-4 and 1961, as might be expected in a period of rising real incomes and steady inequality. We also extend the poverty rate time series of Goodman and Webb (1995) back to 1953-4.