Secondary Poverty

THE MEASUREMENT OF poverty, and what constitutes poverty, have varied over time as well as across disciplines. One common means for determining poverty has been the amount of income earned within a calendar year. This measure is currently referred to as absolute poverty and is a concept that originated from the term primary poverty. Although rarely used any longer, primary poverty was a term coined by Seebohm Rowntree in 1901. Rowntree made a distinction between primary poverty and secondary poverty. Primary poverty refers to subsistence below minimum standards, whereas secondary poverty is a condition whereby income would be sufficient if it was optimally spent.

The origins of secondary poverty began in 1899 when Rowntree embarked on a study of poverty. The study, which resulted in a paper, “Poverty: A Study of Town Life,” was a groundbreaking publication in which Rowntree first expressed recognition of a type of poverty separate from income insufficiency. Secondary poverty, according to Rowntree, was poverty that resulted from a failure of moral character rather than from a lack of income.

In his study, Rowntree first identified families who appeared to be living in squalor. He then compared their income with a minimum requirement for subsistence. Those families whose income fell within the poverty level were considered to be living in primary poverty, whereas the impoverished condition of the remainder of the families was attributed to secondary poverty. Therefore, secondary poverty was a residual category that existed after the exclusion of primary poverty conditions.

Those who were living in secondary poverty, according to Rowntree, were families who had sufficient [Page 961]income to afford the minimum necessities but lived in squalor because of overspending on nonessentials. While some of the spending was considered useful, spending on items such as alcohol was considered wasteful. Rowntree attributed secondary poverty to such things as drinking, betting, gambling, and household mismanagement. Families with fluctuating incomes and those with incomes only slightly above poverty level were the most susceptible to secondary poverty through household mismanagement.

Secondary poverty was a commonly used term in the Edwardian era, the years between 1900 and World War I. A common beliefduring that time was that poverty was the consequence of some moral failure of the individual. Rowntree's explanation of secondary poverty supports the idea that poverty may be due to individual failure; therefore, social investigators readily adopted the concept of secondary poverty during the early 20th century.

Secondary poverty, as defined by Rowntree, is rarely used in the 21st century, as it is viewed as more of a multidimensional condition attributed to factors of the individual, of the community, and of society. However, the idea of distinguishing between types of poverty is an approach often used when examining the extent and depth of poverty. For example, the term secondary poverty is often used to describe short-term poverty, or poverty that is transitory.

Another use of the term secondary poverty is in describing an individual's level of subsistence, outside of the family's income. Measures of poverty often assume that the distribution of resources within a household is equal. However, in countries such as Honduras, Mexico, and Costa Rica, men may withhold up to 50 percent of the household income, thereby placing their wives and children in an impoverished condition. Researchers of world poverty refer to this as secondary poverty because there is sufficient family income, yet individuals within the family are living in poverty.

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