The poor and the poorest, 50 years on: evidence from British Household Expenditure Surveys of the 1950s and 1960s

We re-explore Abel-Smith and Townsend's landmark study of poverty in early post World War 2 Britain. They found a large increase in poverty between 1953-1954 and 1960, which was a period of relatively strong economic growth. Our re-examination is a first exploitation of the data extracted from the recent digitization of the Ministry of Labour's ?Enquiry into household expenditure? in 1953-1954. First we closely replicate their results. We find that Abel-Smith and Townsend's method generated a greater rise in poverty than other reasonable methods. Using contemporary standard poverty lines, we find that the relative poverty rate grew only a little at most, and the absolute poverty rate fell, between 1953-1954 and 1961, as might be expected in a period of rising real incomes and steady inequality. We also extend the poverty rate time series of Goodman and Webb back to 1953-1954.