Development of Social Policy on Poverty and Attitudes to Poverty from the 19th Century to Present Day

Running head: POVERTY
POVERTY
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Introduction:
Poverty entails more than the basic definition of a lack of income and resources in order
to sustain a living. Poverty is a massive social issue that seeks immediate attention in order to
eliminate its existence from society (Hagenaars 2017). The term changes its definition and its
scale according to place and society. For example, the state of poverty in a developed country is
certainly different than the state of poverty in a developed country. A wide range of criteria
involves in the term ‘poverty’ and over the years social policies have been made in order to
combat the social issue. The development of the social policy and attitudes to poverty from the
19th century have altered in various ways. The paper aims to analyze the development of social
policy on poverty and the attitudes to poverty from the 19th century through to the current day.
Discussion:
1.1 The development of social welfare from a historical perspective
During the early 19th century, poverty began to grow as a public concern. Since the 19th-
century people began conducting surveys and began making detailed description regarding the
lives of the poor (Converse 2017). During the end of the 19th century, more than 25 per cent of
the population of the nation was living below or at the subsistence level. The history of social
welfare has evolved through charitable works, organized activities devoted to the social reform
movements along with public social services and non-profit social services to benefit citizens of
the nation. Charitable efforts have commonly raised from religious beliefs that have compassion,
firm ethical convictions with a sense of strong justice. The foundation of the movements were
the reformer’s faiths that led movements in the society. Enactment of Elizabeth poor law of 1601
was the first major step towards creating organized social welfare programs by the parliament of

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England (Graves and Lockyer 2014). Through the help of the specific law, government provision
was authorized for the poor residing in local parishes and even established a system of obligatory
financing outside the church. Prior to 19th century, the impact of the several social phenomena
such as large scale immigration, revolutionary war and widespread urbanization increased, the
cost of taxes required for poor relief and the incidences of poverty increased as well (Woolf
2016). The government began enacting new laws to provide public assistance however within a
short while circumstances demanded more public attention for preventing poverty and other
social ills. The reports on the contribution of the institutions on helping people who were in need
were below the required level. The reports published about the conditions of the institutional care
and places needing significant development such as slum housing, diseases, child labour, low
wages and urban growth. Due to the specified conditions of the citizen, greater public health
efforts were initiated trying to solve the problems caused due to poverty. Social welfare history
can be described by the changes that took place in the laws in order to help activities and services
that the state initiated for fighting with various social ills of the complex origin. Although there
were many other social ills, poverty and public assistance play a major role in this specific
narrative. With WW2, the development of the social policy was considered more carefully to
ensure people are provided with healthcare and appropriate access to resources. British social
policy was dominated by primarily by the poor law which began in 1598 and continued till 1948.
The Elizabeth Poor Law was due to the compulsory poor rate, the creation of ‘overseas’ of relief
and provision for ‘setting the poor on work’. Also, when the industrial revolution led to the
development of towns, rapid population and unemployment rate, it only increased poverty. The
Poor-law Commission of 1834 was hated in the beginning however, most of the development
was done based on this specific law such as national insurance and healthcare.