How the term 'poverty' has changed

#Not all boomers but...

Greatest generation - fight and die in WW2. After the war build a welfare state with the hope that their children and grandchildren and great children will have better, less precarious lives than them

Boomers - grow up in a free democracy bought with the blood of the generations before them and with a safety net bought with the sweat of the generations before them. Are weirdly jealous of the fact their children/grandchildren have better lives than their parents "my dad grew up in real poverty" and object to paying taxes.

Later generations - repeat this pattern of resentment. Also, resent the rising poverty/inequality and "protest vote" for right wing populists who destroy what is left.

Generations not yet born - presumably will look back at all of us as the most feckless, individualistic and selfish generations who passed society on in a worse state than they inherited it.

As I said - this isn't everybody or even most people. But it is an attitude that, where it exists, is very hard to respect.

The UK poverty line - Households are considered to be below the UK poverty line if their income is below 60% of the median household income after housing costs for that year.

Two commonly used measures of poverty based on disposable income are:

• Relative low income: This refers to people living in households with income below 60% of the median in that year.
• Absolute low income: This refers to people living in households with income below 60% of median income in a base year. This measurement is adjusted for inflation

Poverty isn't an idea or a feeling it is properly measured and takes into account numerous parametres
HTH

Have you visited any of the temporary accommodation the council provides for families?!

Some of that is akin to slums and the poor families placed there have no choice but to get on with it. Everyone crammed in one room with no cooking facilities and a bathroom shared with other families, building poorly maintained, often miles from anything on an industrial estate or similar because that’s the cheapest option.

I think the difference now is there’s less poverty and a lot of people never really see it, it was widespread and people were going through it together 50 years ago. Now it’s something you only see if you work with or are one of those impacted, for everyone else it’s unimaginable.

Yup. I am stealing this. Absolutely spot on. The problem is people see the surface differences in what poverty 'looks like' (poor people having a flat screen TV was a real source of outrage in the media for a while). But not what it feels like- housing uncertainty, cold damp homes, fewer opportunities for your children, no hope of change or having more control over your life. That's all still there.

Yes, the idea of "poverty" has indeed changed over time; and I, for one, think that is a good thing.

My mum grew up in a house with only an outside toilet and no central heating. I remember visiting my grandparents and, even until the 1980s, there was still only an outside toilet and no central heating.

I am very glad that our ideas of poverty have moved forward.

This idea of what a concept (eg "poverty") means changes over time in many different areas, not just poverty, to take account of changes in social standards and attitudes.

To take an extreme example, the concept of "cruelty" is the same today as it was when the Bill of Rights 1688 forbade the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments". But changes in social standards mean that punishments which would not have been regarded as cruel in 1688 will be so regarded today.

Or how about the concept of a child's "welfare"? That word was used in section 1 of the Guardianship of Infants Act 1925, now section 1 of the Children Act 1989. The concept of "welfare" is, no doubt, the same today as it was in 1925 but the content of that concept has changed and continues to change.

A child's welfare is to be judged today by the standards of reasonable men and women in 2025 – not by the standards of their grandparents (or maybe now, great grandparents) in 1925 or their parents in the 1980s.

The concept of "poverty" is no different.

What do you mean by poverty used to mean ‘be rich, be a gangster etc?

I mean, it is all relative, isn't it? You could compare our living standards to a developing country , a war torn country or an authoritarian dictatorship and there would definitely be people there worse off than even the poorest in the UK.
That doesn't make poverty levels in our well developed, rich country OK, by whatever bench mark we set. I see plenty of people in utterly desperate situations and choosing between eating or heating for example. Its heartbreaking.

It is not just people who are out of work, or on the fringes of society either. Wages simply do not go as far. I do not consider myself in poverty, but we are not by any stretch well off. Household income is about 45k a year, and we can cover the bills with occasional niceties-but definitely don't have spare cash for big luxuries, holidays or anything. I'm not complaining as I am content with life generally. It would be lovely to afford some of the "nicer" things in life, but I won't go into debt for them and it seems unlikely we will ever have the money to do them.

To some people on a high income, I might seem to be living a very basic life missing some elements of life they might consider essential. I would probably be considered poor by some, possibly even in poverty.

As I said, it is all relative.

@Deeperthantheocean You clearly don’t know how people are living right now. I work with families living in poverty. They don’t talk about it, as it’s so shameful. They hide it as best they can. So do their kids.

On average, one kid in every class in the country is now homeless. But much higher in some areas. Families who are homeless in temporary accommodation are living in Victorian conditions. In one small room for months and sometimes years, kids sharing beds (even teenage kids) with siblings and parents, all in one room, basic cooking facilities in the room, no laundry facilities, having to eat on the bed. It’s like living in a prison cell with your family. You have to sign in every night, so can’t stay anywhere else for respite (camping, nan’s home). No visitors allowed.

Some are dark basements with the window looking out onto the bins. Some are converted office buildings. Sewage comes up. They’re riddled with damp and mould, bedbugs, rats… About half families homeless like this are working. But it’s hard to work as the costs are so extortionate, so they often have to give up. It’s a money trap. They send families to temporary accommodation in other parts of the country with high crime areas, where they know no one. No friends or family.

There are now thousands of families with negative budgets. That means the money coming in is swamped by the money they have to pay for out just for bare basics. So they’re in deep, deep poverty. There are thousands of kids going without food, healthy food, heating, even without lights as their parents can’t afford the energy bills. People are in horrific debt, often to violent loan sharks.

Not everyone gets UC. Thousands of families with kids have no recourse to public funds. They have to work to pay for everything, working two and three cleaning/delivery jobs. Others are benefit sanctioned and get nowhere near enough to live on. And UC isn’t enough. Housing benefit is frozen and covers about 5-10% of rents in many areas. The rest (hundreds each month) has to be made up out ‘standard allowance’: money that’s supposed to be for food or energy.

Plus, I’m sure you see people homeless on the streets. That was rarely seen before welfare cuts in the 1980s. They’re the people who have no rights to any accommodation and can’t afford a private hostel.

Don’t think there’s a safety net. It’s full of holes. There but for the grace go all of us. Some of the families were fine until a parent got cancer or a kid was born with severe disabilities and they could no longer work.

I was born in the 80s and as a child I didn't have a proper coat. I had a hand me down coat which my mum altered as I grew until it was basically a collection of patches and seam extensions (she tried to make it as fashionable as she could). Shoes came from "humanitarian aid" packages sent to school from Germany. Despite working all hours (thanks to free state childcare), there was never enough money. I would get simple meals of soup or porridge, my mum often survived on toast and margarine. We had no TV. No rooms to let either as we lived in a studio flat.
My grandmother was brought up in one room with kitchenette. Two parents, four kids. She later moved to a similar room when she married my grandfather. There were four of them - MIL, grandparents and my mum in 16 square meter basement room with kitchenette and a small pavement level window to let some light in. That was 1962. Victorian poverty isn't as distant as you think. You just never experienced it.

But you never know when your circumstances will change.

As you say, in the past many houses didn't have phones and people would have to borrow a neighbours, or use a payphone. That meant that, when applying for a job even, you weren't always expected to include a personal contact number. Try applying for a job now and explaining that you don't have your own phone but will be checking your email every 2 days at the local library, or can be reached if the employer phones the public phone at the bottom of your road at a specific time of day. You would be locked out of the job market. The world is set up on the assumption everyone owns a mobile phone. Thats what I mean by phones not being luxuries these days.

It's about relative poverty within the UK and the comparison is the gap between the current haves and the have nots, not necessarily between poverty now and poverty then.

Some things aren't as easy to mend as they used to be and some skills (e.g. basic sewing and cooking) aren't taught. But I agree that many people spend needlessly. A friend (not disabled in any way) on benefits pays for a gardener and recently paid a handyman to change a lightbulb!

I would agree housing is the main concern now. I was going to go into the rental market locally to me in SE London (Zone 3/4) after joint ownership of a flat with my exH and found 2 bed flats at £1700+, & not even nice ones (my share of equity won't stretch to anything in London).

Looking in less "popular" areas, 3 bed houses rent for £2k and more. I don't know how the average single parent can afford these ridiculous rents. No wonder schools are clearing out and closing as families go elsewhere to live.

I myself will be leaving London to find something in the East Midlands where I can afford a small 2 bed house with a garden. But only because of that small amount of equity I've got in the divorce. I mean, I only had one child who was brought up in a flat because I couldn't afford a house, but at least in 2002 it was vaguely possible to buy something.

Yes I agree, I was pointing out that it's not an essential for everybody. It depends on their individual circumstances.

Another one if these "I grew up on an income of 2 bob a year and we did ok" threads. OP, are you suggesting that we go back to the old days where life expectancy was a lot lower than it is now.

If you want the old days go and look at the lives of factory workers in India, Thailand etc. Not that we have many factories in the UK now anyway. Is that what you want for the UK.

Thats actually a myth. Quote from the ONS "In 2014, the most common NS-SEC category (8-class grouping) for women giving birth was lower managerial and professional occupation (such as nurses, teachers and journalists). This accounted for 22% of all births." Childbearing by socio-economic status and country of birth of mother - Office for National Statistics
Granted this is 10 years old now, but there is evidence that trend has continued.
Whether you sort by household income, or by education level, wealthier and better educated (uni degree) women are more likely to have children than poorer women. Yes, there are always families to be found where the mother is on benefits but has had 10 kids and they get featured in newspapers like the Daily Mail to give the impression that "benefits Britain" is out of control. But they are an exception and even in 1910 you would have had extremely poor, large families where the children were starving but the parents kept having kids. The Tories used this sort of fear mongering to introduce the 2 child benefit cap but despite this cap, people still like to imply that benefits are allowing the poor to have loads of children.

The number of children living in poverty has gone up. The percentage of children living in severe material deprivation has also gone up. But that's not because poor people are having more children. Its because more families are becoming poor.

I think a thin veneer covers up poverty nowadays. So you talk of elderly relatives who were poor but had a home at least. Nowadays, families may be living in temporary accomodation so they actually have less stability then previous generations. However, when they're walking down the street, they don't stand out as being desperately poor, they are not dressed in rags... because you can pick up a t shirt in Primark for a couple of quid and they're not actually starving because a packet of biscuits costs 50p. And if you didn't buy the t shirt and packet of biscuits, it would make zero difference to your ability to secure a permanent home.

My elderly mum doesn't have a smartphone (or more accurately she did but couldn't work out how to use it due to dementia).

All the services she used to use are slowly being withdrawn.

I do a lot of her admin for her as without a smart phone she can't do it.

So yes, elderly people cope but they mostly cope by having someone else who does it for them.

Very true.

When I was young, tv's were so expensive that many people rented them, now you can pick one up for around 10 hours work at minimum wage. Flights and foreign holidays were prohibitively expensive for most, but now you can fly to the Med on what a student could earn in a Saturday job. Only my most comfortably off friends came from families with cars.

In the 50s, my parents had a chance to buy a very run down house for £500, less than a year's wages, but decided against it because they didn't think they'd be able to afford all the work it needed.

But the basics were cheap, food and energy cost nothing like as much in relative terms as they do now. And most people renting had tenancies that were rent controlled, our rent was less than 10% of my father's pay (early 60s).

Sorry, but now those claiming poverty now wouldn't consider letting out a room, working all day and night, making clothes and baking just to survive.

I come from dire poverty too but good grief, we should be thankful that times and ideas a have moved on. Nobody should have to live like our grandparents lived.
'Don't let my past be your future'. Harry Leslie Smith

Yes - the meaning of 'poverty' in our society has changed over time, but why does that matter? It's all relative. My modest lifestyle on less than £20,000 p.a.(a car, central heating, more than two pairs of shoes, washing machine, holidays abroad etc) would seem like untold riches to my late grandparents who had no inside toilet and never travelled further than Blackpool. And there are still people who go hungry, which is unforgivable in a society like ours.

Life has changed. Internet access is now essential for getting a job or claiming benefit. You can no longer do things in person like you could in the 70s. You even need a phone to get a voucher for a foodbank.

@Anotherparkingthread poor people didn't buy sewing patterns. My dm remembers aunts bringing material to my gran to make dresses for their dc. My gran would draw a pattern on newspaper.
I still have the old treadle sewing machine that she made clothes on.

As a quick example, if you have children in school, how would you cope without a smartphone? Virtually all contact between the school and myself is done via email...last week, my DD has a routine vaccination carried out at school. The letter informing me about this was emailed, I had to consent to the vaccine by following a link to a website. Payment for school lunches and trips is done online...I can no longer pop into the office with a tenner in an envelope. Parents evenings are done online.