ABSTRACT
Local anti-poverty action has created a demand for research to reveal the location and distribution of poverty which can then act as a basis for the targeting of resources. Research into local poverty has also been undertaken, however, in order to stimulate a commitment to action amongst local politicians. The nature of the publicly-available profile is, to a large, extent, a reflection of the political and policy context in which the profile was produced. For some local authorities, a brief profile may have been produced as an aid to local consultative exercises; for others, a much more detailed and technical profile may have preceded detailed policy reviews. The seminal work of Seebohm Rowntree on poverty in the City of York in the 1890s has been taken as establishing an important benchmark for research on the scale of the problem of poverty in Britain, and as providing the empirical basis on which to construct policies to combat poverty it.
