Measuring Poverty.

This article analyzes some sociological studies and measurement of poverty in Great Britain, conducted in June 1954. In the study authored by Charles Booth and B. Seebohm Rowntree, the families living in poverty was divided into two sections. First, families whose total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. Second, families whose 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. The minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were calculated by estimating the nutritional needs of adults and children and by translating such needs into quantities of different foods and hence into money terms, and by adding on to these figures certain minimum sums for clothing, fuel and household sundries, according to the size of the family. The studies that followed adopted the same approach and although there were some minor alterations, the standards used for measuring poverty were broadly the same, adjusted according to change in prices, as that used by Rowntree in 1899.