A recent report form the city of Buenos Aires measuring multi-dimensional poverty, using the consensual method, has found that in 2019,15.3% of households were multi-dimensionally poor, rising to 25.7% for households with children under 18 years of age. The method established will be used to measure nu,ti-dimensional poverty on an ongoing basis.
We are now delighted to offer you the presentation slides and video recordings of sessions across the three days, featuring formal presentations, interactive Q&As, networking opportunities and much more.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Steering Group on Measuring Poverty and Inequality has been tasked with producing a guide on Measuring Social Exclusion which references a lot of our PSE work.
Original notes and documents from the 'Poverty in UK' study
Below you can access a variety of documents relating to the 1968/69 'Poverty in the UK' research survey and for a detailed study of large families that was part of this overall project. The documents also cover material produced for Peter Townsend's book of the survey, Poverty in the UK (1979). They cover research notes, survey design, correspondence, letters and chapter drafts for the Townsend book.
These documents provide an insight into the thinking that lay behind the study, the refinement of the research process as the study progressed, and the discussions - and, at times, disagreements - that surrounded it.
An example of Townsend's original notes for his 'Poverty in the UK' book
The original letter, 'Correspondence Tony Atkinson', can be found in the zipped folder 'PinUk book - Older Workers' .
Organisation of the documents into folders
The pdfs of the original documents are contained in zipped files which group together related documents. The list of zipped files is set out below and a full description of which papers and documents are covered in each zipped file can be found in the document called 'Allocation of original Townsend documents to folders' which can be downloaded here. The zipped files can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. You can download Townsend's book, Poverty in the UK, here.
The 'Poverty in the UK' survey documents
These documents cover:
PinUK survey - sampling method
PinUK survey - correpsondence on sampling
PinUK survey - questionnaire
PinUK survey - fieldwork notes
PinUK suvey - project management
The Townsend 'Poverty in the UK' book documents
The materials relating to the subject areas covered by the survey have been organised to reflect the chapters of the Townsend book. Some of the folders include drafts of the chapters. Not all of the subject areas covered in chapters of the book have documents associated with them.
PinUK book - Definitions
PinUK book - Theories of poverty
PinUK book - Inequality, poverty and health
PinUK book - Concept of resources
PinUK book - Objective and subjective deprivation
PinUK book - Problems of poor areas
PinUK book - Characteristics of the poor
PinUK book - Unemployment and sub-employed
PinUK book - The low paid
PinUK book - Older workers
PinUK book - sickness and poverty
PinUK book - One parent families
PinUk book - 'Old people'
PinUK book - Supplementary benefits
PinUK book - Mean tested benefits
Disability documents
There are a large number of documents around disability which are more extensive than the materials used in the Townsend book chapters on disability and disabled children (chapters 20 and 21). Peter Townsend took a particular interest in disability and contributed to numerous reports.
Disability - Correspondence
Disability - Calculations
Disability - Definitions and notes
Disability - statistics and numbers
Disability - unused calculations
Disability: press arctilces
Disability - other articles
Disabled children
The Large Families’ study
You will also find documents produced for the Large Families study, which was a separate research project undertaken by Hilary Land.
Large families study - overview and sample
Large families study - interviewees
Large families study - reports and arctilce
Large families srudy - correspondence on report
Large families study - reaction
Large families study - follow up study of school children
The allocation of these documents to these folders has been made around 45 years after the documents were originally produced. Any organisation of the documents at the time had long since gone. Some of the documents could have been allocated to different folders, so it is worth checking folders relating to similar topics. And some of the documents may have been misallocated.
There were some documents for which it was not clear what they referred to. They are in a filed named:
Unallocated
These materials are provided under Creative Commons License. Please credit the Townsend archive for any extracts used.
We would like to thank Hilary Land for the Large Families materials.
PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.
