The Poor and the Poorest

Income distribution and social change, and Abel-Smith and Townsend do no more than confirm his findings. What their present paper concentrates on is the first assumption and their conclusions are startling. Two million people ('the poorest' referred to in the title) are living on incomes below the National Assistance scale plus cost of housing. Of these, two-thirds of a million are children? 5 per cent of all the children in the country. 'The poor', who are defined as all people living on not more than 40 per cent above this level, comprised 14.2 per cent of the population in 1960 and numbered million people. Under half of these were old-