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Poverty, mass unemployment and welfare

This chapter explores the changing nature of poverty – and the responses to it – in a local context across the whole of the twentieth century. Amongst other things, it argues that the demise of the New Poor Law was, in some respects, a retrograde step when viewed in terms of the erosion of links between the poor and welfare officials. Attention is also paid to the debate over the usefulness of concepts such as 'relative poverty‘.