Having fixed the primary poverty line, the next step was to ascertain what proportion of the population of York were living in primary and secondary poverty respectively.
In order to do this trained investigators visited every working class house in York, and gathered together with other facts, information which enabled a reasonably accurate estimate to be made of the income of each family. In the course of the visits note was taken of every family which was evidently living in poverty as judged by the housing conditions and the signs of malnutrition. The number of those living in secondary poverty was ascertained by subtracting from the total population found to be living in poverty those whose incomes placed them below the primary poverty line. It was found that io% of the total population of the city or 151% of the working-class population were living in primary poverty, and 18% of the total population or 28% of the working-class population were in secondary poverty. It may be noted that when the two groups of "primary" and secondary poverty are taken together we have figures, namely, 43% of the working classes and 28% of the total population of York, which are readily comparable with the results obtained by Booth.
Rowntree, in analysing the immediate causes of primary poverty, showed that more than one half of it was due solely to the death of the wage earner, 22% to largeness of family, and the rest to miscellaneous causes.
The causes of secondary poverty do not lend themselves to similar classification, but Rowntree stated them as drink, betting, ignorant or careless housekeeping, and other improvident ex penditure, and put drink as the predominant factor.
It may be added that subsequent investigators, such as Prof. A. L. Bowley and Miss Hogg, have practically ignored the ex istence of secondary poverty, concentrating rather on the en deavour to estimate the number of those who in any given area are compulsorily below the poverty line or are living in primary poverty.
The enquiries of Booth and Rowntree were followed by other investigations of particular areas. In 1912 and 1913 investigations were made by Prof. A. L. Bowley and Prof. A. R. Burnett-Hurst into conditions in certain typical provincial towns, namely, Reading, Northampton and Warrington, and the mining area of Stanley. These were supplemented a little later by a similar enquiry into conditions in Bolton, and the results of these researches were published in Livelihood and Poverty in 1915. The lines followed were similar to those of Rowntree, save
that the method of taking samples of each town was adopted, in place of the investigation of every household. The results were measured by Rowntree's "poverty line" and also by the authors' "new standard," based upon that of Rowntree, with certain minor variations—the general effect of which was to make the standard somewhat higher for an adult and somewhat lower for a child. The net difference per family between the two standards, how ever, was comparatively slight. With prices ruling on Feb. 1, 1928, Bowley's standard amounted to L2 Is. 2d., made up as follows :— food LI 2S. 6d. ; clothing, fuel and sundries 9s. 4d. ; rent 8s. od., and compulsory insurance Is. 4d. This compares with Rowntree's £2 IS. lid.
The conclusion reached by those adopting the new standard, assuming full time wages to be earned in every case, was that in these five towns I 1% of working-class families were below the primary poverty line. It should be noted that this figure makes no allowance for loss of earnings due to unemployment, and there fore it cannot properly be compared with Rowntree's figures, which were based upon the actual average income over the year. The fundamental principle, however, that of a poverty line de termined by the requirements of bare physical efficiency, remains precisely the same.
In 1924 a similar investigation was made in the same towns with a view to discovering whether pov erty had diminished in the intervening period. The results of this appear in Has Poverty Diminished? by Prof. Bowley and Miss Margaret H. Hogg. Taking the "New Standard" as the basis of comparison, and allowing for the increase in the cost of living, the investigation showed that the proportion of the work ing-class population below the primary poverty line had fallen from 11% in 1912-14 to 3.6% in 1923-4, assuming full time wages to be earned in every case, or to 6.5%, assuming that the actual in comes of the families observed during the week of the investiga tion were equal to their average weekly incomes throughout the year. The latter basis is the more appropriate for purposes of com parison with Rowntree's figures.