Inequality

In Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) Peter Townsend examined relative deprivation covering a wide range of aspects of living standards, both material and social. He found that there were levels of income below which consumption and participation fell well below what might be seen as normal or acceptable in an increasingly affluent society and argued that this group should be seen to be in poverty. By clicking on the libks below you can download this seminal book. We have provided the full book, 1,216 pages, as one PDF as well as individual chapters and appendices as separate PDFs for download.

Please cite ‘Townsend, P. (1979) Poverty in the United Kingdom, London, Allen Lane and Penguin Books’ if quoting from this book.

Poverty in the United Kingdom: whole book

This bulletin reports on OECD measures of inequality, the rise in income poverty, the final report of the High Pay Commission, fuel poverty, the Family Resources Survey deprivation indicators for Northern Ireland, HM Revenue and Customs child poverty measure, and the Child Poverty Act.

Basic deprivation is the key dimension associated with economic stress, according to a study funded by the European Commission.

Researchers examined the relationship between material deprivation and economic stress in European countries, using data from the 2009 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Stress was measured by reference to how difficult households felt it was to make ends meet.

Oxford, Oxford University Press, 176 pp, ISBN 978-0-19-959152-7 (hbk)

Kenworthy examines the relationship between economic growth and changes in living standards among low-to-middle income households in 20 rich nations, including the UK and the USA, over the period from 1979 to 2005. He also examines how this relationship varies between countries, and what drives this variation.

Kenworthy argues that one of the principal goals of antipoverty efforts should be to improve the absolute living standards of the least well-off. He addresses a set of questions at the heart of political economy: