Poverty line

Seebohm Rowntree, an industrialist from the York chocolate-making family, investigated poverty in York in 1899 and published Poverty: A Study of Town Life in 1901. He found that around 28% of York’s population lived below the poverty line. Poverty was therefore not simply a problem of the capital: it also affected a smaller provincial city.

To judge whether a family had enough to live on, he calculated a poverty line. This was the income needed to pay for basic subsistence: the minimum necessities required to maintain physical health. He drew on advice from nutritionists and physiologists and on the costs of rent, food and clothing in York.