How the term 'poverty' has changed

[Deeperthantheocean]

Just this really.

Poverty in my grandparents' age was 'be rich, a gangster, work hard or you die'.

This was so true, whole different era and real poverty from their times being born in the 1910s and the aftermath. Sadly my GF died so GM was alone bringing up 2 children and then adopting another as that's what what you did when members of the family were being abused. No benefits, only a council where you to practically beg for help and it was so looked down upon and gossip then was brutal.

So, a little 2 bedroom house, outhouse toilet, coal fire, no electricity. My GM worked all day and night... cleaning, making clothes and took in 2 male lodgers in the downstairs 'parlour', made breakfast and evening meals for them.

The 3 girls shared a double bed, GM got up at 4am every morning to bring in coal and make the fire before everyone else got up to go to work/ school. Then she went to work, physical cleaning work to the rich and snooty. The sad thing is she was she was so intelligent, gifted at creativity and music (she played the church organ with music she learnt from heart voluntarily) and sowed the most beautiful dresses. Also cakes.

Having rambled on a bit because this is deep to my heart hearing the stories, poverty was a case of just being able to survive, eat and have a roof. The DC were incredibly intelligent but had to to go to work aged 15 cand over all their wages for the family fund.

Poverty now has a different criteria, which of course it should as society has progressed. However aibu to compare the claim to poverty now to then? There is help, UC, recognition of SEN with DLa etc.

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.

Am I right? I wouldn't either as there has been so much to eradicate these hard times but I truly respect the hardship and feel so grateful for what we have now. Xx

I run a food bank and over this winter received a discretionary grant to offer essentials to our beneficiaries. We funded shoes, winter coats, a washing machine, a bicycle, a set of clothes for children in the next size up etc.

It always amazed me that these were all things which my status as a member of a well-off community meant that I could likely have for free or very little - our local FB and WhatsApp groups are full of them - but my beneficiaries couldn’t access. They didn’t have the time to bumble around on facebook, or the connections to be on the street WhatsApp group, or the transport to shift a washing machine.

More generally - poverty looks different here. Having lived both here and in parts of Africa I’d certainly still prefer to be in poverty in the UK than, say, Nairobi, but it doesn’t mean that poverty here doesn’t entail actual and sometimes significant hardship.

But in order to make the bread you need the ingredients.

You also need (if you don't have a bread maker) somewhere warm to prove the dough.

A working oven that you can afford to run (even if you have something else cooking in there).

The physical ability to make the bread.

Ffs what a crass post.

I promise you, those in poverty are struggling plenty - even by your standards. Most would dream of having a room spare to rent out. And baking to survive? Do you honestly think that with the cost of living, that buying the ingredients to make something that could be bought in Asda for £1 would make money?? Ridiculous to compare.

This is wring

I agree, but there is seriously something wrong when the people most able to afford children are the affluent (not rich) and the poor on benefits. Governments that preside over that (and both political parties have/are) are part of the problem and this latest shambolic lot are seriously embedding that even more

The biggest difference really came in the late 40s/early 50s with:

• The introduction of the NHS
• The introduction of national insurance
• The introduction of the welfare state
• secondary schooling for all

You therefore see a big difference in what "poverty" for someone living in 1910 and now would look like but, equally in what "poverty" would look like for someone living in 1910 and living in 1960. Yes, there are obviously technical differences - even poor people have mobile phones these days (they didn't exist in 1910 but are essential now). Its not very fair to say "in my day we coped without phones" because their prevalence today means you would be penalised for not having one. Its superficial. But there are now measures in place to stop children literally starving if their parents lose their jobs (there are still lots of children going hungry) or having to sell everything they have if someone breaks their leg. And that's all because of a system put in place at a time the UK was almost bankrupt by men and women who had fought a bloody, dangerous war and wanted to make the world a better place for their children/grandchildren.

But - there is rising economic inequality in the UK and that does matter in practical terms (not just envy) because the bigger the wealth gap the harder it is for ordinary people to buy "assets" since they go up in price with the income of the more wealthy leaving other people unable to e.g. buy houses when their parents could or unable to rent. Also, some of the institutions painstakingly built by the greatest generation are being eroded/slowly privatised by stealth. If we lose the NHS we go back to a world where becoming ill spells economic ruin for some.

Its fine to compare as the original poster did (and interesting). Its not really OK for people who grew up post WW2 in a world built through the sacrifices of their parent's generation to disparagingly compare the poverty faced by young people now with the poverty that their parents/grandparents faced at the start of the century. Because real responsibility would look like conserving these improvements for the future. Rather than allowing that work to be dismantled because earlier generations had it tougher than them so generations born after us should suffer too. That is incredibly selfish and self-centered. But I do think its convenient for some to have people fighting amongst themselves - boomers V millenials V genZ, or locals V asylum seekers etc, rather than looking at the bigger picture which is a concentration of wealth and creeping privatisation of public services.

I don't agree that a smartphone is a necessity. There must be a lot of older people who have an older mobile or a landline which suffices to contact people and can't be bothered with the internet.
In fact till roundabout the 70s there were whole rows of houses in some areas where nobody had a phone.

I agree. I get flour and yeast from Lidl. It's more expensive than cheap sliced bread but better. I also make my own clothes cheaply using fabric stall on the market and shops that sell dead stick, it's much cheaper except for jeans as good denim is hard to come by. Those things aren't totally relevant though. I have the skills and the equipment which not everyone does and it's also a hobby.

Smartphones are no longer a luxury. I volunteer at a foodbank and spoke to a man who was stuck because his phone was smashed - he showed it to me. He couldn't apply for jobs even through an agency without one and we could do nothing to help him with that. I did suggest he used computers at the library but I don't know how he got on with that.

Your example does seem relatively privileged.

My grandma post war shared a house with her extended family and her, her husband and her small children had one room plus the bathroom and kitchen was shared with her mum and dad and four siblings.

My other grandma lived in three rooms in someone else's house - shared kitchen and bathroom plus a room of her own for herself and husband.

These days there are many people who are living in very cramped accommodation in similar situations- families in temporary housing which lasts for years where they have one room plus shared kitchen and bathroom.

The quality of housing has generally gone up - all new build houses have inside toilets now, and there's double glazing so you no longer wake up to frost on the inside of the windows (although increasingly people are struggling to afford heating) but there's still people on the streets and living a family to a single room,

Interesting thread. I think drugs play a part - the conditions in which addicts survive in is probably what some people would define as poor nowadays. If you have a fairly clean and consistent place to sleep then most of society thinks you’re doing ok.

As a child in the 80s/90s it was very fashionable to have non homemade things. A knitted jumper would have not been really cheap, someone would have spent hours making it but it was embarrassing to wear - people would have preferred a Mickey Mouse jumper. Processed foods and ready meals were really popular rather than meat and two veg. I think when people made clothes they would have made them out of old sheets, or mended existing ones/hand me downs rather than going out and buying new fabrics. Expectations definitely changed - it was more normal, if you were well off or not, to do more for yourself even if you worked long hours.

I think we had quite a good period from the late 90s to the mid 2010s - material possessions, food and clothing became very cheap, but now they’re becoming more unaffordable it feels a lot worse. There still would have been poverty during this time, and I’m sure if food banks were around at the time then they would have been used.

As others have said, it’s now more unacceptable for people to share rooms and houses across generations and having lodgers.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.