First published in 1979, Urban Poverty in Britain 1830-1914 examines the plight of the poor in towns as a direct result of industrialization. This valuable study examines the major causes of poverty – low pay, casual labour, unemployment, sickness, widowhood, large families, old age, drink and personal failings – and society’s response to the problem. It also pays attention to the changes in food consumption brought about by migration to the urban areas. Detailed accounts of specific problems and specific situations are combined with a look at the broader questions, and subsequently provides a thorough account of urban poverty in this period.

Demonstrates how people reacted to poverty and highlights their coping strategies

In 1999, one in four British children lived in poverty—the third highest child poverty rate among industrialized countries. Five years later, the child poverty rate in Britain had fallen by more than half in absolute terms. How did the British government accomplish this and what can the United States learn from the British experience? Jane Waldfogel offers a sharp analysis of the New Labour government's anti-poverty agenda, its dramatic early success and eventual stalled progress. Comparing Britain's anti-poverty initiative to U.S. welfare reform, the book shows how the policies of both countries have affected child poverty, living standards, and well-being in low-income families and suggests next steps for future reforms. Britain's War on Poverty evaluates the three-pronged anti-poverty strategy employed by the British government and what these efforts accomplished. British reforms sought to promote work and make work pay, to increase financial support for families with children, and to invest in the health, early-life development, and education of children. The latter two features set the British reforms apart from the work-oriented U.S. welfare reforms, which did not specifically target income or program supports for children. Plagued by premature initiatives and what some experts called an overly ambitious agenda, the British reforms fell short of their intended goal but nevertheless significantly increased single-parent employment, raised incomes for low-income families, and improved child outcomes. Poverty has fallen, and the pattern of low-income family expenditures on child enrichment and healthy food has begun to converge with higher-income families. As Waldfogel sees it, further success in reducing child poverty in Britain will rely on understanding who is poor and who is at highest risk. More than half of poor children live in families where at least one parent is working, followed by unemployed single- and two-parent homes, respectively. Poverty rates are also notably higher for children with disabled parents, large families, and for Pakistani and Bangladeshi children. Based on these demographics, Waldfogel argues that future reforms must, among other goals, raise working-family incomes, provide more work for single parents, and better engage high-risk racial and ethnic minority groups. What can the United States learn from the British example? Britain's War on Poverty is a primer in the triumphs and pitfalls of protracted policy. Notable differences distinguish the British and U.S. models, but Waldfogel asserts that a future U.S. poverty agenda must specifically address child poverty and the income inequality that helps create it. By any measurement and despite obstacles, Britain has significantly reduced child poverty. The book's key lesson is that it can be done.

Using a neo-Marxian perspective, Benno Engels examines the absence of urban planning in nineteenth-century England. In his analysis of urbanization in England, Engels considers the influences of property owners, inheritance laws, local government structures, fiscal crises of the local and central state, shifts in voter sentiments, fluctuating economic conditions, and class-based pressure group activity.

"The People of the Abyss" by Jack London The book contains his first-hand account of several weeks spent living in the Whitechapel district of the East End of London in 1902. London attempted to understand the working class of this deprived area of the city, sleeping in workhouses or on the streets, and staying as a lodger with a poor family. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.

First published in 1979, Urban Poverty in Britain 1830-1914 examines the plight of the poor in towns as a direct result of industrialization. This valuable study examines the major causes of poverty – low pay, casual labour, unemployment, sickness, widowhood, large families, old age, drink and personal failings – and society’s response to the problem. It also pays attention to the changes in food consumption brought about by migration to the urban areas. Detailed accounts of specific problems and specific situations are combined with a look at the broader questions, and subsequently provides a thorough account of urban poverty in this period.

The contributors respond to the absence of critical debate surrounding the ways in which spaces of the city do not merely contain, but also constitute, urban poverty. The volume explores how the spaces of the city actively produce and reproduce urban poverty.

This is compounded by the lack of voice and influence that low income groups have in these official spheres.