The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
Original notes and documents from the 'Poverty in UK' study
Below you can access a variety of documents relating to the 1968/69 'Poverty in the UK' research survey and for a detailed study of large families that was part of this overall project. The documents also cover material produced for Peter Townsend's book of the survey, Poverty in the UK (1979). They cover research notes, survey design, correspondence, letters and chapter drafts for the Townsend book.
These documents provide an insight into the thinking that lay behind the study, the refinement of the research process as the study progressed, and the discussions - and, at times, disagreements - that surrounded it.
An example of Townsend's original notes for his 'Poverty in the UK' book
Comments on Townsend's paper on older workers
From Frank Parkin, Univeristy of Kent, August 1971
Organisation of the documents into folders
The pdfs of the original documents are contained in zipped files which group together related documents. The list of zipped files is set out below and a full description of which papers and documents are covered in each zipped file can be found in the document called 'Allocation of original Townsend documents to folders' which can be downloaded here. The zipped files can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. You can download Townsend's book, Poverty in the UK, here.
The 'Poverty in the UK' survey documents
These documents cover:
- PinUK survey - sampling method
- PinUK survey - correpsondence on sampling
- PinUK survey - questionnaire
- PinUK survey - fieldwork notes
- PinUK suvey - project management
The Townsend 'Poverty in the UK' book documents
The materials relating to the subject areas covered by the survey have been organised to reflect the chapters of the Townsend book. Some of the folders include drafts of the chapters. Not all of the subject areas covered in chapters of the book have documents associated with them.
- PinUK book - Definitions
- PinUK book - Theories of poverty
- PinUK book - Inequality, poverty and health
- PinUK book - Concept of resources
- PinUK book - Objective and subjective deprivation
- PinUK book - Problems of poor areas
- PinUK book - Characteristics of the poor
- PinUK book - Unemployment and sub-employed
- PinUK book - The low paid
- PinUK book - Older workers
- PinUK book - sickness and poverty
- PinUK book - One parent families
- PinUk book - 'Old people'
- PinUK book - Supplementary benefits
- PinUK book - Mean tested benefits
Disability documents
There are a large number of documents around disability which are more extensive than the materials used in the Townsend book chapters on disability and disabled children (chapters 20 and 21). Peter Townsend took a particular interest in disability and contributed to numerous reports.
- Disability - Correspondence
- Disability - Calculations
- Disability - Definitions and notes
- Disability - statistics and numbers
- Disability - unused calculations
- Disability: press arctilces
- Disability - other articles
- Disabled children
The Large Families’ study
You will also find documents produced for the Large Families study, which was a separate research project undertaken by Hilary Land.
- Large families study - overview and sample
- Large families study - interviewees
- Large families study - reports and arctilce
- Large families srudy - correspondence on report
- Large families study - reaction
- Large families study - follow up study of school children
The allocation of these documents to these folders has been made around 45 years after the documents were originally produced. Any organisation of the documents at the time had long since gone. Some of the documents could have been allocated to different folders, so it is worth checking folders relating to similar topics. And some of the documents may have been misallocated.
There were some documents for which it was not clear what they referred to. They are in a filed named:
- Unallocated
These materials are provided under Creative Commons License. Please credit the Townsend archive for any extracts used.
We would like to thank Hilary Land for the Large Families materials.
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Publication date:
Oct 5 2016
