Abstract
This paper considers the temporal changes in levels of recorded poverty in Britain distinguishing between times of anecdotal reporting (1845–1901); the first national counts and geographical distribution descriptions (1895–1965); to the current era of an industry dedicated to poverty counting and cartography (1968–2008). The persistence to the geography of poverty over time is remarked upon and speculated over. In conclusion it is argued that it is important to understand the distribution of wealth to better understand poverty.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abel-Smith, B., & Townsend, P. (1965). The poor and the poorest. Occasional Papers in Social Administration, 17. London: Bell.
Adamson P. (2007) Child poverty in perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries. Innocenti Report Card 7, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.
Atkinson, A. B., Corlyon, J., Maynard, A. K., Sutherland, H., & Trinder, C. G. (1981). Poverty in York: a reanalysis of Rowntree’s 1950 survey. Bulletin of Economic Research, 33, 59–71.
Booth, C. (1894). The aged poor in England and Wales. London: Macmillan and Co.
Clark, C. (2002). Wealth and poverty: on the social creation of scarcity. Journal of Economic Issues, 36(2), 415–421.
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray.
Davies, J. B., Sandstrom, S., Shorrocks, A., & Wolff, E. N. (2006) The world distribution of household wealth, UNU-WIDER, Katajanokanlaituri 6 B 00160 Helsinki, Finland.
Dorling, D. (2003). A century of progress? Inequalities in British society, 1901–2000. In D. Gilbert, D. Matless & B. Short (Eds.), Geographies of British modernity: Space and society in the twentieth century, part 1, chapter 2 (pp. 31–53). Oxford: Blackwells.
Dorling, D. (2004). Distressed times and areas: poverty, polarisation and politics in England 1918- circa 1971. In A. R. H. Baker & M. Billinge (Eds.), Geographies of England: The North–South divide, material and imagined. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dorling, D. (2006). Infant mortality and social progress in Britain, 1905–2005, chapter 11. In E. Garrett, C. Galley, N. Shelton & R. Woods (Eds.), Infant mortality. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Dorling, D. (2010). Inequality: Why social inequality persists. Bristol: Policy.
Dorling, D., & Thomas, B. (2004). People and places a 2001 census atlas. Bristol: Policy Press.
Dorling, D., Mitchell, R., Shaw, M., Orford, S., & Davey Smith, G. (2000). The ghost of Christmas past: health effects of poverty in London in 1896 and 1991. BMJ, 7276(23–30), 1547–1551.
Dorling, D., Rigby, R., Wheeler, B., Ballas, D., Thomas, B., Fahmy, E., et al. (2007). Poverty, wealth and place in Britain, 1968 to 2005. Bristol: Policy.
Engels, F. (1845, 1987). The condition of the working class in England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Galton, F. (1869, 1892). Hereditary genius: An inquiry into its laws and consequences. London: Macmillan and Co.
Glennerster, H. (2002). United States poverty studies and poverty measurement: the past twenty-five years. Social Service Review, 76, 83–107.
Glennerster, H., Hills, J., Piachaud, D., & Webb, J. (2004) One hundred years of poverty and policy. York: Jospeh Rowntree Foundation http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1859352227.pdf.
Gordon, D., & Pantazis, C. (Eds). (1997). Breadline Britain in the 1990s. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Gordon, D., & Townsend, P. (Eds). (2000). Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty. Bristol: Policy.
Gordon, D., Adelman, L., Ashworth, K., Bradshaw, J., Levitas, R., Middleton, S., et al. (2000). Poverty and social exclusion in Britain. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Gregory, I., Dorling, D., & Southall, H. (2001). A century of inequality in England and Wales using standardised geographical units. Area, 33(3), 297–311.
Hatton, T. J., & Bailey, R. E. (2000). Seebohm Rowntree and the post-war poverty puzzle. Economic History Review, 53(3), 517–543.
Jargowsky, P. A. (2003). Concentration of poverty declines in the 1990s. Poverty and Race Research Action Council, 12(4), 1–2.
King, S. (2000). Poverty and welfare in England 1700–1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kroll, L., Miller, M., & Serafin, T. (2009) The world’s billionaires. [online] Available from: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/worlds-richest-people-billionaires-2009-billionaires_land.html. Last accessed 19.04.09.
MacKenzie, D. (1999). Eugenics and the rise of mathematical statistics. In D. Dorling & S. Simpson (Eds.), Statistics in society: The arithmetic of politics. London: Arnold.
Pearson, K. (1895). Contributions to the mathematical theory of evolution. -II. Skew variation in homogeneous material. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Mathematical, 186, 343–414.
Rowntree, B. S. (1901, 2000). Poverty: A study of town life. Bristol: Policy.
Rowntree, B. S., & Lavers, G. R. (1951). Poverty and the welfare state: A third social survey of York dealing only with economic questions. London: Longmans.
Scott, J. (1994). Poverty & wealth: Citizenship, deprivation and privilege. London: Longman.
Thomas, B., & Dorling, D. (2007). Identity in Britain: A cradle-to-grave atlas. Bristol: Policy Press.
Tomkins, A. (2006). The experience of urban poverty 1723–82: Parish, charity and credit. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tomkins, A., & King, S. (Eds). (2003). The poor in England 1700–1900: An economy of makeshifts. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Townsend, P. (1979). Poverty in the United Kingdom: A survey of household resources and standards of living. London: Penguin Books and Allen Lane.
Welshman, J. (2006). The concept of the unemployable. Economic History Review, 59(3), 578–606.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dorling, D., Pritchard, J. The Geography of Poverty, Inequality and Wealth in the UK and Abroad: Because Enough is Never Enough. Appl. Spatial Analysis 3, 81–106 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-009-9042-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-009-9042-8