IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/1686.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Poverty and the Welfare State in Inter-war London

Author

Listed:
  • Bailey, Roy E
  • Hatton, Timothy J.

Abstract

In this paper we re-examine poverty among working class households in inter-war London using the newly computerized records from the New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL), a survey of living standards in London undertaken in 1929–31. First, we examine how the use of different poverty lines affects the number of households found to be in poverty. We then analyse the effects of the inter-war social security system in relieving poverty. Finally, we estimate what difference it would have made to the extent and incidence of poverty if the post-Beveridge social security system had been in place during the inter-war period. Our main conclusions are that the inter-war social security system had played a greater role in averting poverty than it has sometimes been given credit for, even though substantial poverty remained. The post-Beveridge social security system, if applied in the inter-war period, would have reduced poverty still further, but would not have eliminated it.

Suggested Citation

  • Bailey, Roy E & Hatton, Timothy J., 1997. "Poverty and the Welfare State in Inter-war London," CEPR Discussion Papers 1686, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1686
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1686
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy J. Hatton & Roy >. Bailey, 2000. "Seebohm Rowntree and the postwar poverty puzzle," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 53(3), pages 517-543, August.
    2. Celso Nunes, 2008. "The Economic Thought on Poverty Measurement: From the Nineteenth-Century to the Rediscovering Era," Working Papers 92, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    3. Osamu Saito, 2015. "Growth and inequality in the great and little divergence debate: a Japanese perspective," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(2), pages 399-419, May.
    4. Seltzer, Andrew J. & Wadsworth, Jonathan, 2023. "The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labor markets: evidence from the New Survey of London Life and Labour, 1929–1932," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120895, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Jessica S. Bean, 2015. "‘To help keep the home going’: female labour supply in interwar London," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(2), pages 441-470, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Interwar Britain; Poverty; Social Security; Welfare State;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1686. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.