Seebohm Rowntree and the postwar poverty puzzle

In his third social survey of York carried our in 1950, Seebohm Rowntree re ported a steep decline since 1936 of the percentage of households in povert y. He attributed the bulk of this decline to government welfare reforms ena cted during and after the war. This article re-examines the surviving recor ds from the 1950 survey, using a revised poverty line and looking more clos ely at the measurement of income. It also re-assesses the impact of welfare reforms on working-class poverty, and finds that poverty in York was signi ficantly higher, and the contribution of welfare reform substantially less, than was originally reported.