ABSTRACT
Seebohm Rowntree is generally associated with ideas of devising poverty measures and counting the poor. But he did not intend his measures to defme the boundaries of poverty; his 1899 primary poverty measure (here called P 1) was instead simply a criterion of the inadequacy of incomes. He stressed that his 1918 and 1937 Human Needs ofLabourmeasure (herecalledHNOL) was a standard for minimally adequate wage rates. In effect, his projects were setting Minimum Income Standards (here called MIS). The history of the only moments when British government officials reviewed the basis of income maintenance benefit levels, in 1934, 1942 and 1965, shows that Rowntree's project has so far remained unfmished.
