ABSTRACT
The earliest investigations were largely descriptive and set out to uncover the nature and extent of urban poverty. The work of Engels (1844) in Manchester graphically illustrated the plight of the poor working class and anticipated the research of the Chicago ecologists almost one hundred years later. In sharp contrast to the ecologists, however, Engels identified structural factors, and in particular the unequal distribution of economic power, as the principal cause of poverty and deprivation. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Booth’s magisterial study of poverty in London further illuminated the disadvantaged position of the poor. Significantly Booth, who was opposed to all forms of socialism, began his survey in the belief that personal factors lay behind poverty but he later modified his view to acknowledge the role of structural forces such as the distribution of good housing and job opportunities. Booth also recognized the analytical value of mapping the incidence of concentrations of poverty.
