ABSTRACT
D. Piachaud’s first criticism, relating to the separation of choice from constraint, was overcome by the 1983 and 1990 Breadline Britain studies which identified both those households/people who “do not have but do not want” and those who “do not have and can not afford” an item. Piachaud’s second criticism is, of course, key. If the objective, scientific measurement of poverty is unattainable, then surveys such as the Breadline Britain studies are of only limited academic value. The 32 questions used in the Breadline Britain in the 1990s study can be considered to be a subset of this larger group of all possible questions about deprivation. The estimated correlation between the 32 Breadline Britain questions and the ‘true’ scores, from the infinite possible number of deprivation questions, is the square root of Coefficient Alpha. Piachaud’s final major criticism of the ‘relative’ theory of poverty relates to the problem of identifying the poverty threshold/line; he considered that a continuum may exist.
