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’m not Rees-Mogg, I think he’s a nasty “see you next Tuesday”

There is a safety net today except for the homeless who fall through the cracks.

On my side there is a lot of generational anger from how the English landlords treated the Irish during “the great hunger”, evicting starving people from their homes.

I think what we have today is "relative poverty" rather than actual poverty. People are poorer than other people around them. Thanks to the benefit system people won't starve, they will have a roof over their head, children will be educated, and there is free healthcare. It's not the same as years gone by. We have good birth control so people don't end up with a house full of kids they can't afford (though many choose to have them anyway). Children might have to share rooms, but it's nothing like the 5 kids to a room sleeping under Dad's coat that froze to the wall in winter that my grandparents had to live with.

I know it's a cliche but I know a couple of families who plead poverty and use food banks when they all own iPhones, the kids have game consoles etc. It's often about priorities. What's essential and what's not. These things should be a luxury, not the first priority.

People struggle, of course they do. But the difference is they're not going to starve/freeze because of poverty like they genuinely might have done in the past.

"Some people are still hungry and malnourished. Unable to sleep due to the cold"

This. Can't sleep because I'm hungry or cold. I posted about it (it being my experiences of poverty) once and was shot down in flames and was accused of my post being badly written , probably because I was upset by it all when I posted.

I wasn't believed by the lovely people on MN so I asked for it to be taken down.

People don't realise how bad it is.

That wasn't just poverty though. That was a completely avoidable crime of negligence by Trevelyan etc. I do see your point about it being all relative. But I have a problem with man-made famines being the benchmark of how we measure what poverty is. If you follow that logic, you might as well say only concentration camps are "real poverty". They aren't. They are something different (if also involving immense human suffering).

I grew up very poor, I mean really really poor.

I'm now well off. I'm yet to meet anybody middle class who can fathom poverty. At all. It's like their mind is incapable of accepting it. I know lots of people who think they went without because they couldn't afford a school trip. They can't comprehend not having any money at all. It's like their brain can't process it. It's not their fault, but they don't realise how lucky they are.

It's their fault that they choose to stick the boot in though.
I know people can't understand it.

Also OP, you’re only talking about British poverty (which, as I said earlier, is really bad for lots of people in the U.K.) but around the world there are people living in horrific conditions and sewing your clothing for 2p an hour.

For some people, poverty is much worse than whatever your grandparents experienced.

It’s crazy how people cannot understand that there is poverty in this country. And to see the romanticism of it in the OPs post is really disgusting.

There are a lot of people struggling and it’s obscene that people can dismiss it as not happening.

Rubbish. You are simply not aware of what's going on. UC can take weeks to get paid out and Foodbanks only give 3 days emergency food and you need a Voucher to get it. It's not a free help yourself supermarket. People on zero hours contracts might get a full week's pay one week and only one or two days the next- how are they supposed to live?

It's that phrase 'isn't relevant'. I think it's very relevant., in fact essential to a rounded discussion, eg for our definition of the word 'poverty'.

The thing that annoys me is when people judge having a mobile as a marker of poverty. Try claiming a benefit, looking for a job, banking without the internet these days.

Don’t forget nowadays people can work and still be eligible for benefits, and good banks exist. Poverty just looks very different in 2025.

I think it can both be true that once you're in "the system" it can be fairly easy for some people to live a life of complete dependence on the state - developing skills to navigate the benefits system, knowing exactly what to say etc

And that for the kind of person who is generally doing okay but one pay packet away from trouble, it's really difficult to work out how to get quick money to tide you over for a few months while you find another job

Just look at things like PIP, you constantly have people with genuine and obvious disabilities being turned down because they tried to sound positive and cheerful in the interview, while others follow online instructions to say exactly the right things despite being pretty much fine

One thing that marks modern poverty out from its counterpart in previous generations is the ubiquity of technology. Thanks to societal changes and the decisions made by institutions to become reliant on apps, websites and smartphones, individual women, men and increasingly, children, are pushed into having tech themselves whether they can afford it or even want it. It may not be an individual's choice for themselves or their children - well tough. Get on board or there are some services you just won't access, including UC, jobs, banking in many areas, cheap train tickets, homework (I don't know anything about this as I don't have children, but apparently homework is sent via email or on school intranet sites.) A lot of service providers don't like sending bills through the post and will go out of their way to get you online.

My phone is used for calls, texts, bus and train tickets, my senior railcard, email, shopping, banking, news, music and notifications of all kinds etc as it's become easier to load as much of my life as possible onto one device and harder to organise things in any other way. My bank account has to be managed online - I can only use the branch if I have a cheque for more than £2k to pay in. My GP surgery will not accept repeat prescription requests over the phone. You have to use the app or an online form. We no longer live in the 1980s and 90s and I'm fine with that. But the extent to which we've become dependent on our phones isn't a result of individual choices, it's societal and systemic and blaming individuals for the expensive outcome is obtuse. At the same time, the cost is placed at the door of the end user, who may find that they have to get a smartphone, regardless of any other financial pressures they have.

Thank you for posting OP It’s educational reading all the different perspectives and opinions but I am really interested in learning:

1. what made life generally improve so much in uk post war after all the suffering and destruction.
2. what do we need to do now to make life better across board but especially for next generation. Not lose precious things that have brought better health etc.

1. I come from on one side v poor Irish immigrants (farming) who worked hard at jobs allotment and raising six children. Grandad lost tied cottage when job changed by new landowner and evicted. They were given council house with huge garden but only three bedrooms so tight but so appreciative of government help.

Now descendants are all in decent jobs have homes, enjoyed free education etc. They would be amazed at their lives. Now feels like weee going backwards. So what can we take from past and what else to change our society because some of PPs accounts are terrible? sorry about stupid numbering

homework (I don't know anything about this as I don't have children, but apparently homework is sent via email or on school intranet sites

Yes it is...I'm not sure you can even apply for your child to go to school without doing it online? When my teenage ds started school, I actually filled in a paper form...I don't even know if that's an option now.

I think I’ve posted before about this but I have a relative who has never worked. In their 40s. Their spouse is disabled so they get benefits for this.

I’m quoting their mother and sister in saying that the reason they don’t work now is through choice. They were needed at home when their children were small but now that they’re grown there’s no reason for them not having a job.

So these kind of people do exist. Now I’m not saying I begrudge them the money, but I can’t think it’s good for anyone to never work a day in their life.

I don’t claim poverty but I still mend clothes and bake to save money. Maybe that’s why I don’t claim poverty? Managing your finances and prioritising spending seems to be less important than instant gratification nowadays.

My parents were comfortably off and my mum made all our clothes, cooked and baked everything from scratch. The only difference between us is that I was able to further my education, qualify as a professional so didn’t have the time to do what she did. However, had she been born later she too would have qualified as a professional ( probably a doctor). But her family didn’t have the money to support the girls through education, it was reserved for her two younger brothers neither of whom went into further or higher education.

Not really a poverty issue but poverty does seem to discourage ambition nowadays. I would imagine that many of us are wealthy nowadays as a direct result of our ancestors ambition to elevate themselves out of the poverty trap. When there was no welfare state to support you, hard work was the only solution. Being a professional with a high income is still hard work but the benefits are rewarding. And this takes us back to the wage conundrum. If we paid sufficient salaries there would be no need for supplements. However this would not end poverty because there will always be a sub group that cannot or will not work and we have to support them from a humanitarian point of view.

Raising minimum wage but reducing employers NI contributions would have been a more sensible way to address the current problem. It would lessen the benefits bill but reduce NI income. Money would have been saved ultimately on reducing the cost of administration. But it is politically more of benefit to a government to be seen to give out money than for employers to just pay a living wage. Instead, employers facing the huge cost of NI and they cut jobs and hours pushing those on minimum wage further into poverty requiring more and more top ups.

Give it a few years and huge numbers of jobs are going to be replaced by AI anyway.... governments are going to have to think outside the box as to how people will manage

Yes, absolutely it should be recognised and I'd love something to change. But what I mean in, when I'm sat on my sofa with a hot drink in my hand, watching TV knowing I can have a hot bath later it doesn't feel like poverty.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I was born in the late 60s, my mum was one of ten living in a very poor household. She left my dad in the 70s, we shared a bed with coats on top to keep warm for a few years. She worked 70 hour weeks throughout my teens and turned down a council flat, preferring to private rent as the local estate was a dive. I was lucky enough to get into a fantastic grammar school and thanks to social mobility got a degree and out of the poverty trap. I’m not sure how easy that would be now. I live in Oz now in a five bedroom house with a pool, it’s a bloody long way in every sense of the word to where I came from. But I don’t think that social mobility is there any more. Wage stagnation in the UK is a real problem, I was earning 30k in the 90s as a newly qualified accountant, I’m horrified to see some of the wages on here seem to have remained the same while house prices have multiplied enormously. Welfare dependency in the UK is a massive issue because wages just haven’t kept up with inflation, it’s a real problem.

I think you are conflating two things: people not understanding how bad it is for you and people pointing out that poverty in general has declined over time. It is perfectly possible for them to be able to do both.

I’m sorry you’re having such a terrible time: I fully believe that poverty is degrading, discouraging and terrifying. It is also something that can happen to anyone - it’s not usually driven by an individual’s freely made choices. I hope things improve for you and you get some luck soon.

It’s not relevant in how we discuss the poverty of today

I agree with this. I also grew up really poor amongst really poor neighbours. People would "borrow" some slices of bread from a neighbour so they could give their kids dry toast for breakfast. That is because they had NO food in the house at all.

I've just had a look at the application process for the FE college I went to as a sixteen year old back in the 1980s. Granted, it's not quite the same place, because it merged with a couple of other institutions and built a new facility in town, but it caters to roughly the same cohort as it did back in the day, plus a 14-16 intake with EHCPs who've got the support of their LEA. And yes, the form's online. And the mobile number is a required field - I don't think I've come across that before and I've filled in more forms online than I like to remember.

I don't understand why this bothers you at all, do you want people to suffer more so they fit your definition of poverty?

Is kids having to rely on school to be fed and clothed enough?