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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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!!

In the United Kingdom, poverty is defined as when a household's income is below 60% of the median income for that year. This is known as relative low income

So as median income goes up, you'll have "richer" poor people

Destitution - Households in destitution are defined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as those who have to go without two or more essentials in the past month because they couldn't afford them, or if their income is extremely low (less than £95 a week for a single adult). Essentials are defined as having a home, food, heating, lighting clothing, shoes and basic toiletries.

https://trustforlondon.org.uk/news/what-is-poverty/

Then you can consider a weeks holiday as a measure...
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2010-11-19/debates/10111964000004/Holidays(Low-IncomeFamilies)

The Government already use the lack of a one-week break away from home as a measure of poverty, and the Office for National Statistics provides the shocking figures that tell us that more than 2 million families with dependent children—almost one in three families—cannot afford a simple holiday.

Does any of this examine closely what people in poverty spend their money on? There'll be some stats somewhere about % spent on rent etc.

Where in the UK have slums returned to?

Was that directed at me? I'm not convinced that the IFS has any "skin in the game" here. The absolute same can be said about you - you are using your experience and extrapolating it to draw conclusions more broadly than it justifies. This is why we need studies, including those by independent organisations like The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (one of the ones that I linked to above, and which was behind the first ever report on childhood poverty) and the IFS. Does more need to be done? Yes. But that doesn't mean a great deal of progress has been made and has not been undone. Could it be undone in the future? Yes, but it hasn't been yet.

So you don't consider people poor unless they are committing wildlife crimes? 😂

This thread is batshit. Is that you Rees mogg?

Nobody is poor apparently unless they're eating hedgehogs they have caught on the local park, dressed only in sacks without access to any footwear at all, and have taken up residence in a stick house by the bog, and shit outside.

If poor people lived like this you would be the first to complain! 'hello officer there's a strange unwashed barefoot man, with his unspeakables barely covered by his loin cloth, roasting a moor hen on an open fire he's started down by the canal. What no I don't want to be tranfered to the rural crimes department! Somebody think of his 7 children!'

Is that what you want the streets to look like? Or would it be okay because you live in a noice neighbourhood and they would take all the dirty plebs off to some workhouse, or encampment. Where you could be ensured they suffered appropriately for the crime of being skint.

Back in the real world, outside of these Dickensian novel stereotypes, poor people are allowed to enjoy some quality of life. Poor people are allowed to wear clothes. Poor people are allowed to buy a 1.50 cake from Asda bakery. Poor people are allowed mobile phones. It isn't a moral failing to be poor. These things are not wreckless indulgences. These people would not somehow become rich or able to afford to better themselves if only they went without food/shoes/clothes/heating/a phone. If poor people spend money on apparently anything at all, it's considered a waste. Tell me what would you spend your hard earned threpence on instead of these things?

but that is the comparison she is making. It doesn't mean that another comparison might show something different (except it doesn't) but that is the comparison that she is making. And she can make it without - and I don't think she is - denigrating or minimising poverty today.

There weren't 'no benefits' in the 1910s.

The Liberals under Lloyd George brought in the 1911 National Insurance Act which provided various 'benefits' for the poor & unemployed.

Poverty that caused high infant mortality/disease spread through overcrowding and inadequate clean water & sewage systems has decreased but that isn't to say poverty no longer exists.

There are still malnourished kids sleeping on bare mattresses in damp homes.

There are still elderly people getting hypothermia because fuel is so expensive.

I'm delighted we live in a country where that extreme poverty is gone, but there are a lot of people who work bloody hard and still have pretty awful lives. The cost of living and housing and the government need to do a lot more to get those costs falling relative to income. There are a group who are happy to live off the state and whose expectations rise over time, I have little time for them.

People in poverty don’t struggle to eat or heat their home??

Have you seen the threshold figures?

My grandmother could still remember the trauma of being taken, as a little girl, to a fancy shop in the west end, where someone suddenly whipped out a pair of scissors and cut her plait off. All the girls in the family had had their hair washed and plaited, and then taken up west by the oldest sister, who had arranged to sell their hair. They had to because their dad had been injured, and the family were in dire straits. It was the only thing they had to sell.

Life without a safety net is very scary. And unfortunately, we are heading back that way because of choices made over the past few decades.

From the OP:

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.

That’s strongly implying to me that the OP thinks those who “claim poverty” could work to bring themselves out of it by letting out a room, baking and sewing their own clothes. And if they aren’t doing those things they’re not really trying.

God you’re making me think of my gps- my gd died when my dad was 15 so he and two of his brothers left school and got jobs ( you wouldn’t be able to get a ft job now), their mum worked as a manager in a shop and a cleaner and rented out a room in the house. Didn’t ask the sleeping arrangements but there were four boys and definitely not that many bedrooms. Tiniest bathroom in the world!

Just saw someone saying about fixing clothes etc- another example of a different era- a lot of clothes now wouldn’t survive mending- clothes were built to last then

The wider availability of debt makes poverty different now

People used to make their own clothes and knit jumpers - most women could do both - because it was cheaper, so unless you could afford a dressmaker etc. they were essential skills.
During the first year at my first school, we had to have a specified overall to cover our uniform. You couldn’t buy them - they had to be made from a Butterick pattern. Obviously decades ago now, but it was fully expected that every family had at least one member able to make such a thing.

Um.. the op did.

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.