preview

Poverty: A Study of Town Life Essays

Decent Essays
Open Document

Poverty: A study of town life
INTRODUCTION
After reading Booth’s work on The Life and Labour of the People of London led me to construct my own investigation on poverty but in a provincial town so I can then find an applicable general conclusion for a smaller populated area.
My objective is to investigate upon the living conditions that the working classes of small towns inhabit as well as the growing problem of poverty.
Preparing for my observational research I had to decide on how to collect my information as there are two methods I have found and both could be effective in coming to a general conclusion about poverty in Britain. One method is to gather together and analyse statistics which would include looking through medical …show more content…

So I began short house to house surveys to the whole of the working class in of the city, and with this I decided to obtain my information regarding the housing, occupation, and earnings of every wage-earning family in York. Also together with the number and age of the children in each family.
As my investigation progressed I found that likewise to Booth’s research into poverty the lowest wages to the working class is 21 shillings which I have concluded to be 14.5% of the population. Along with this, the image acts as evidence to that the statistic since an average middle or upper class person can afford to spend 60% on food and the rest on clothing or leisure items, whereas a family of 4 live off 21 shillings a day.
A primary objective of mine is that I should not only take into consideration the population that is living in poverty but also the nature of the poverty.
On the streets of York there are 11,560 families which inhabit 388 of the streets this compromises the population of 46,754. Amongst these families are families of whose total earning are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. After seeing this type of poverty which comes under financial struggle I believe this should be described as ‘primary poverty’. Then in comparison are families whose earnings would be sufficient for the maintenance of fairly physical efficiency were it not that a small

Get Access