Defining and Measuring Poverty

Any discussion of poverty must begin with a definition. This chapter discusses some of the many different ways of defining and measuring (UK) poverty. As there is no undisputed way to measure poverty, any definition likely performs an ideological function. As such, we discuss attempts to measure of poverty quantitatively and qualitatively, using measures such as census statistics and Carstairs scores and wide ranging public surveys. We also summarise the wider context for the present research.