Primary poverty

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Primary poverty is a categorization of poverty created by Seebohm Rowntree, the group of people who live below his poverty line.

To live in primary poverty is to have insufficient income to meet one's basic needs.

According to his study in York, 10% of the city’s population lived in primary poverty. Rowntree describes the group as consistently having "insufficient financial resources to obtain the minimum necessities for the maintenance of mere physical existence".^{[citation needed]}

The poverty line shows points where an individual might find themselves above or below the poverty line, an idea that Rowntree developed from Charles Booth. The poverty line that Rowntree drew had the age of the individual along the bottom, and it showed main events in the persons life that would affect whether or not they were above or below the poverty line. The events include becoming married, their children beginning to earn, when the children leave home and marry and when the individual is above the age at which they can work. The three main areas on the line in which the individual is said to be below the poverty line are from the ages 5–15, 30–40, and 65+.

See also[]

• Poverty threshold
• Secondary poverty

Further reading[]

• Briggs, Asa: A Study of the Work of Seebohm Rowntree: 1871-1954, Longmans, 1961
• Rowntree, B S: Poverty: A Study in Town Life, page 298. Macmillan and Co., 1901
• University of Glasgow, Extracts from B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life