ABSTRACT
In the last years of the nineteenth century Seebohm Rowntree painstakingly gathered information concerning the social and economic conditions of 11,560 families living in York (almost two-thirds of the population). After calculating the extent of their income and the amount the families in his study would need to spend to survive, he concluded that nearly ten per cent of the whole population were living in primary poverty - in households where the total earnings were 'insufficient to obtain minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. A further 1 7 per cent were living in secondary poverty - households where the total earnings 'would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by other expenditure either useful or wasteful' (Rowntree, 1901 ). A decade later he undertook a similar survey of rural social and economic conditions and again uncovered extensive poverty and destitution (Rowntree and Kendall, 1913). In both studies the calculations were accompanied by a rigorous analysis of both the causes and consequences of living on an insufficient income.
