ABSTRACT
Historically, poverty has been the main concept for making sense of the health consequences of being economically poor. Booth and Rowntree concluded that this level of poverty was not due to individual 'idleness' or 'fecklessness' but unemployment and low wages, exacerbated by large families. These conclusions resonate with and reflect enduring political debates in many high-income countries with expanded welfare states. In public health, it has become commonplace to use the term 'deprivation' rather than poverty and the UK uses measures of deprivation to monitor its progress in reducing child poverty. The appearance of the term 'social exclusion' in the late twentieth century emphasized the social dimensions of deprivation rather than the material. In so doing, social exclusion downplays the significance of income poverty for deprivation. Poor people tend to live in poor neighbourhoods because of lower house prices and the availability of social housing. Deprivation and poverty remain significant issues for public health.
