How the term 'poverty' has changed

I agree your grandparents generation or those who were adults during the war had it worse for sure but I would say those born from the 1945+ have had it better than their kids/grandkids generation!

We might be technologically far more advanced but the younger generation these days have no chance of buying a house, unless they’re on a great wage.

They equally can’t get social housing as that’s practically doesn’t exist anymore, unlike my parents generation where you’d pop to the council office and ask for a house.

“Council housing” doesn't exit now. There used to be huge estates that were council owned and and now most of them have been snapped up and bought at a lower cost by those in my parents generation. They benefited greatly oh and look what’s happened… there is no housing left for the next generations.

Private rentals are in severe short supply so that’s not always an option. I remember even 25 years ago if I wanted to rent somewhere I just phoned the letting agent and it was mine and now there is 20 people applying for one rental. It’s unbelievable!

Chances of getting an ambulance is pot luck now.

NHS Dentist are almost non existent now

You’d be lucky to get a Doctors appointment within a month, yet I remember when my mam would make an appointment and just not turn up because they were ten a penny and she took it for granted.

If you need a hospital appointment, good luck with that. If you get one within a year you’re doing well. For contrast, my auntie got breast implants on the NHS because she wasn’t happy with the shape of them! I mean there is no way that would happen now.

Back in the day if you attended A&E you’d have been fuming if it took up to 4 hours, where now if you get seen within 6 you’re lucky.

Uni was free up until 1998 or there abouts, so our parents generation had more chance of social mobility than their kids/grandkids. These days only the rich can afford it unless the 18 year old is saddled with £30+ grand worth of tuition fees and that doesn’t include housing or living costs.

I remember when a 3 bed house in a reasonably nice area was £55,000. That was say 25 years ago (I was about 18 and on about £4.50 per hour on minimum wage) That same house would be about £180/190 now. Yes the minimum wage has gone up but no where near enough to be able to afford such a house when you add on the monthly payments and borrowing and interest.

My aunt moved out at 19 and bought her first house (2 bed terraced) on the minimum wage. There was no deposit required. That would be impossible now.

Many companies offered good pension schemes and work incentives such as double time on a weekend etc… and there were fab perks where there is not much of that these days.

Given the above, No one will convince me that our parents generation had it worse!!

Statistics aren’t propaganda they are statistics, compiled from data. The are facts whether you like them or not.

Can you provide examples of all these rich people who are gaslighting regarding poverty?

Also housing and healthcare are both problems to be solved at a governmental level. Which will be funded by taxation. Most of which is paid by rich people.

Unfortunately we have lots of people in this country who are too small minded and can’t see past the massive chip on their shoulder to realise that - rich people are good for the country.

There was a thread recently about millionaires leaving the U.K. and it was shocking how many people were saying they didn’t care because they don’t pay tax anyway. They do. Lots of it. And having them here is a good thing for that reason. We should all be concerned about wealthy people leaving the U.K. if we want less poverty in this country.

In many cases this is a childcare need, not ‘if my child doesn’t do 4 activities a week we are poor’.

Lots of children back then only went to Brownies. Now children do Dance on a Monday, swimming on Tuesdays etc, so it's kind of become the norm for children to do numerous after school activities.

People of the Abyss is one of the most depressing books I have ever read and it was all True .

OP YABU imo due to the gap between comparisions (100 Years)

It is really depressing how much time and effort is made by rich people to gaslight, lie, create new statistical propaganda and ignore the return of slum living conditions, poor working conditions and other indicators such as the return of poverty-based health conditions.

You are not fooling anyone and all you are doing is creating resentment, alienation and anger in those who know it for a lie. This is why lawlessness is growing in the U.K.

Yes, life was very hard back then and the meaning of poverty has changed so much. My gran was left to bring up 6 children alone, she worked 3 jobs; she worked in the mills, she cleaned and she mended clothes just to keep a roof over their head and food in their bellies.

My grandfather took off with his "fancy piece" as I remember my gran saying when I was younger. He was a flawed man but very intelligent, was offered a full scholarship to a top boarding school however the family had to decline it as he was needed to work on the farm. There were so many intelligent children who didn't really get to make the most of their abilities because of family circumstance. As there is today as well I guess, although outreach programmes have helped a lot (I only managed to attend uni through an outreach program for disadvantaged children).

It's a different world. It doesn't make financial sense to learn skills like sewing. Food, clothes, and tech are all cheap, probably too cheap if you're looking at it from an environmental angle. But then accommodation is so ridiculously expensive. You can't compare. I do think that most of us don't appreciate how lucky we are to live in current times. I couldn't pick any point in history that I would be better off living in.

My centenarian parent was from rural Ireland and talks about children walking to school barefoot in the summer and her aunt, who lived “by the bog”, only put on her one pair of shoes to walk to town once a week but apart from that went barefoot, whole families dying of TB one by one, a local family catching blackbirds and hedgehogs for food etc.

That’s poverty in my eyes.

Well, thank you for that education. Your experience is clearly an excellent and scientific indication of whether or not things have improved on a population level. Your experience is irrelevant, as is mine (which by the way you have no idea about, so perhaps don't always assume that you know something others don't).

The data is not straightforward to read, because the definition of poverty changes. In addition some rely on income poverty alone (the current standard approach of those earning less than 60% of the median wage only cam in in the 1970s so there is no data in that respect that goes back far enough for the OP): https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/, while others consider that this is an unhelpful measure and other measures can give better indicators based on resource: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/below-average-resources-developing-a-new-poverty-measure/below-average-resources-developing-a-new-poverty-measure#introduction (for example). But what is clear is that compared to 30 years ago poverty in the UK has generally reduced (though not for all groups): https://www.jrf.org.uk/a-minimum-income-standard-for-the-united-kingdom-in-2022 (see the report you can download at the bottom) and https://www.economicsobservatory.com/what-has-happened-to-child-poverty-in-the-uk-over-the-last-30-years - which shows child poverty reducing since 95/96 (with some upward shifts, but a general downward trend).

UK child poverty is high for developed nations, and we should be ashamed of this, but this does not mean that people are not objectively better off than they were a hundred years ago. This report from the IFS: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/R215-Living-standards-poverty-and-inequality-in-the-UK-2022.pdf shows absolute (income) poverty declining across all groups since the start of this century and relative (income) poverty declining less steeply, but still declining. It concludes "Together these patterns meant that income poverty fell, on both an absolute and a relative basis." I am not aware of a later paper on the same topic, though there might and things might have changed, but I doubt so drastically as to support your position that matters have not really improved on a population level over the last 100-odd years.

So even on the standard measures, you are plain wrong. But - when comparing more than a hundred years ago (think the OP said her GPs were born in the 1910s) - other non-income measurable aspects apply. Vaccination for childhood diseases, vaccination for HPV, the NHS - free healthcare for all, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy etc. None of these are things that can be measured in terms of income or are particularly easily measured by reference to resources, however, they have all contributed to a great improvement in quality of life for the vast majority.

Just as there will never be a 100% literacy rate, there will always be those living in appalling conditions. This may well not be anything to do with their choices, but the State cannot "save" everyone. Should child poverty be lower? Yes. Do I think that in 10 years it will be? I hope so, and I suspect so as we move away from the economic problems caused by Covid, the Ukraine war etc.

But @EdithBond you are exactly what I was talking about when I made my previous post: the "I see bad stuff so it must be worse" brigade, who don't have the imagination or education to understand just how poor the standard of living was for a great many people 50, 60, 100 years ago. All these resources are freely available to you on the internet. I suggest you supplement your personal experience with more data driven research.

This, with the addition that it is essential to have a phone. My employer has just told us to download an app to have access to rotas, which is essential as we are all on shift work nowadays. They are not the only one, I was able to leave a previous employer a few years ago when they demanded the same, but there’s no option now. Technology is forced down our throats whether it is cheaper for us or no. In fact much modern poverty is caused by modern technology, with the loss of jobs and required fuel costs. Meanwhile the rich sit on hundreds of acres or hundreds of owned houses and sneer at those whom they force to create their wealth.

Literally nobody has suggested sewing clothes to save money in the modern era. Poverty used to look very different, and poor people used to have to make their own clothes because manufactured goods were beyond their reach. Knitting and sewing are now relatively expensive hobbies. That doesn't change the fact that home made clothes used to be an indicator of poverty.

And in those days there was no NHS, no antibiotics, no effective pain relief in childbirth, education for most ended very early, and girls and women had far fewer rights. I know I am going slightly off topic but the point I am trying to make is the broader perspective of progress. Poverty at whatever point in time and however it manifests is a scourge and it blights lives. I was very poor as a young single mum in the mid 80's, I am talking about having bare legs in the winter because I could not afford tights, putting cardboard in my one pair of leaking boots and skipping meals to feed my child. I don't want anyone to have to go through that. Sadly some instances. I did at one stage have a friend living with me who had started a new job in my city and that really helped with money but she was a woman I knew and trusted around my toddler not some random stranger. As for the current economic climate, the essentials for life are horrendously expensive now, gas and electricity up by 67%, food up by 30%, never ending increases in council tax and water bills. These days people have to have smart phones and the internet to participate in society, it is not a frivolous luxury and we cannot compare how things were over a century ago with the society we have today.

People in poverty today often don’t struggle with any of those things.
Below 60% of median UK income (AFTER housing costs) is how it is now defined. This means that no matter how rich our society becomes, 40% of us will always be classified as living ‘in poverty’.
In other words, it’s utterly meaningless.

Exactly this - plus in pre-contraception times (not sure exactly when this was, but still into the 20th century), poor people would have had loads of kids and extra mouths to feed, even though some of those kids would have died. No vaccinations so childhood diseases were rife and often fatal, as well as adult diseases like TB (consumption) and smallpox. Life was harder and grimmer. You just can't compare it to now when people can make a conscious decision to have one or no children if they can't afford it.

100% agree. Poverty hasn't changed but the world has changed.

The working class and middle class has been gutted by globalism, big businesses got very rich by bringing down their labour costs -all the jobs that our grandparents could get have gone abroad to China or other countries and the modern poor have to rely on handouts from the state.

Power has been concentrated into the big businesses and now they are bringing down their costs through unprecedented mass immigration, more employees chasing each job and opportunity, it only favours big busineses so a chance at a good secure well paid job and a decent pension is getting scarce for the working and middle classes.

I hate sentiments like the OP. No one wants to be poor. No one’s poor because they don’t want to bake their own bread or let out a room in their house. Few people have a spare room to let out or are allowed to do so anyway. Mobile phones are not luxuries— how would you get a job without one? All TVs are flatscreen TVs. UC is a ‘safety net’ of sorts, but a pretty flimsy one. People are still feeling forced to choose between eating and heating, or between feeding themselves and feeding their children. Some children still don’t have decent warm coats and shoes. Yes, poverty looks a bit different now because the world has changed, but let’s not kid ourselves that it is any less miserable.

OP would you be willing to take in lodgers and have an outside toilet and not heating and risk illness?

This is such a weird thread. You’re romanticising how our ancestors lived. Our ancestors once threw excrement out into the street, regularly had wars and lived in caves. Your grandparents time has thankfully gone. Stop making out that it was filled with better people - it wasn’t. People were ostracised and killed for all sorts of reasons. People died from diseases. People died from the cold.

People in this country are fucking struggling to feed themselves and their kids and this is massively insulting to them.

Not just victorians. In the 50's I went to the local primary school which was linked to the parish church. Children came to school in winter with no coats and broken shoes tied onto their feet. We were by no means rich. We lived in a private rental which was subsequently condemned and we moved to a newly built ground floor council flat. The ground floor of the condemned house was an old warehouse and we lived on the two upper floors which had been the offices and storage. outside toilet, no bathroom at all, no running hot water, heated by two open fires and we were considered fairly well off. Clothing that we had outgrown was passed to other children via the church and I was taught at an early age not to comment if I saw a child at school in my old clothes or shoes.

What poverty looks like has changed. Frankly, with all the resources and technology at our fingertips now, we shouldn't have any poverty at all. It's an ideological choice, IMO.

I volunteer with homeless people and they all have mobile phones and some tech. They also have serious addictions (mainly alcohol but also heroin), MH issues, are in and out of prison, no place to go and have no security in life whatsoever. They're reliant on a disparate body of well-meaning people to help, but it's not very joined up and it won't solve their issues. It's highly unlikely most of them will live to see 60. Poverty is very much alive and well in the 21st century.

Makes me laugh when people suggest poor people should sew their own clothes to save money instead of buying a £2 primark t shirt. Sewing is difficult, expensive and takes time to learn. A new cheap sewing machine still costs £100, and a secondhand one might not work - would you be able to service a sewing machine op? Sewing machine servicing is upwards of £100.

Fabric is expensive, cheap thread and needles can be bought from the pound shop but they will be shit. Schmetz needles are good, but they cost from around £2 a packet. A half decent reel of thread will be £2 each. It might take a beginner 10 hours to learn to make a t shirt. Fabric cost - at least £3 a metre for t shirting fabric, you'd probably need 2 metres. So far we are at £10 to make one tshirt - not including the cost of the sewing machine. Oh wait, You'll need some dressmaking pins too, that's another £2. Pattern for the t shirt - let's say £6.

£18 to make a t shirt. What if you've got 3 kids and they all need a t shirt? And jogging bottoms? And pyjamas? And school uniform?

OP, imagine being in emergency accommodation in Middlesbrough with 3 young kids and no family support for months on end. Drug dealers hanging out in the halls of the flats and outside systematically tearing down the fences for fun and kids hanging out playing music on their phones and banging on the windows for shits and giggles till God knows when in the morning or until and overstretched PCSO finally comes and moves them on, drug addicted prostitutes hanging out outside the local shops even in daylight asking for business. All knowing that you can't afford private so you have to wait for a council house and you just have to suck it up or maybe go back to an abusive partner.

And then when your kids do go to school it's in one of the most deprived areas of the country and the chances of them getting in with or into trouble with some kids who themselves have been abused all their lives and your life just feels fucking hopeless, no good jobs or opportunities, everyone fucking angry with their lot (and young lads getting recruited by far right grifters or religious fanatics)

OP hasn't got a fucking clue what poverty in this country looks like, middle class fucking naval gazing bullshit.

No welfare state until 1945 and NHS until '48. Things changed after that. Yes the measure of poverty has changed massively. There is such a thing as 'digital poverty' now which is a contradiction in terms when you think about it. Absurd but its a sign of the times.

It's true. People had it much worse, but wealth concentration has reached new extremes, with a handful of billionaires controlling wealth equal to that of billions of people, and we seem to be heading back to those times again.