Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty

by Peter Townsend (Primary Contributor)

Since 1990, the World Bank, most of the other international agencies and an increasing number of governments have committed themselves to the eradication of poverty. But the basis of their work badly needs overhaul and concerted verification. Breadline Europe provides a scientific and international basis for the analysis and reduction of poverty. It demonstrates that there is far more important research into the problem of poverty going on in many countries of Europe than the international agencies and national governments admit or even realise. Knowledge of the major scientific advances in research needs to be spread among other countries within as well as outside Europe. Breadline Europe has been written by a number of leading European poverty researchers and has three main the need for a scientific poverty for better definition and measurement of what is the biggest and rapidly growing international social problem; the need for better theories distinguishing between poverty and social exclusion, with the corresponding policies calculated to diminish these problems;the need for better international social policy and for better policy-related analyses of for more exact analysis of the year-by-year contribution of specific policies to poverty. This is the first book to examine poverty in Europe within the international framework agreed at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development. Breadline Europe provides up-to-date, essential reading for social science undergraduates and postgraduate students. It will also be of considerable interest to policy makers and NGOs with a concern for poverty reduction.

480 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2000

About the author

Peter Brereton Townsend was a British sociologist who wrote widely on the economics of poverty and was co-founder of the Child Poverty Action Group. The Peter Townsend Policy Press Prize was established by the British Academy in his memory. Townsend was dedicated to studying "very carefully the life of the poorest and most handicapped members of society". [wikipedia]

After early years working for the independent research organisation - Political and Economic Planning (PEP) - and then research at the Institute of Community Studies (1954-57), Peter Townsend became Research Fellow and Lecturer at the London School of Economics (1957-63). He was then appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex in 1963. Subsequently, he held posts in social policy and development at the University of Bristol and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Peter Townsend was regarded as one of the pioneers of research on poverty in the United Kingdom. He was Chairman of the Child Poverty Action Group from 1969 and of the Disability Alliance from 1974. Prior to his death in June 2009 he was Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Fellow of Social Policy at the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice, University of Bristol, and Centennial Professor of International Social Policy, LSE.

Townsend's work questions many of the philosophical and theoretical models of poverty whilst also playing a key role in developing new measurements, models and definitions of poverty and inequality. [ESDS]