The income approach to poverty studies and analysis was pioneered by Charles Booth and Joseph Rowntree in their works on London in 1886–89 and York in 1899–1900 respectively (Gazeley & Newell, 2007). Since then the income concepts have been applied in
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diverse ways by different authors. Prominently, it has been applied by the World Bank to studies of poverty on a global scale. This sub-section will examine the income approach to poverty studies from the perspective of Rowntree, the earliest and again most influential.
1.4.1 Joseph Rowntree’s approach
Rowntree undertook his first study of poverty in the city York in 1901 using data collected from a survey of working class families in 1899 (Townsend, 1954). He then estimated the weekly minimum expenditure for food and other necessaries to determine the poverty line (Townsend, 1954). Rowntree’s approach divided families living in poverty into two categories:
Families whose total earning are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. Poverty falling under this head may be described as primary poverty. And families whose total earnings would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by other expenditure, either useful or wasteful. Poverty falling under this head may be described as secondary poverty. (Townsend, 1954, p. 130)
Townsend (1954, 1962, 2010) observed that in estimating the minimum requirements for the maintenance of physical efficiency, Rowntree estimated the nutritional requirements of children and adults, translated such needs into quantities of varying foods, based on which a monetary determination was made. To come to an accurate determination of family resource needs, calculations and adjustments were made for such consumables as fuel, household sundries as well as clothing according to family sizes.
Townsend has indicated that using this methodology, Rowntree and others developed poverty measures in the 1950s to determine poverty line for countries. In Rowntree’s study of York, he estimated that a family of five, comprising husband, wife and three children required ‘12S. 9p. for food, 2S. 3p. for clothing, 1S. 10p. for fuel and 10p. for household sundries, totalling I7S. 8p. per week’. The poverty line was therefore set at 17S. 8p. Rent was
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also estimated as a predetermined figure and added as an unavoidable figure to the total sum. A household was classified as poor if its total weekly earning was lower than 21S. 8p., inclusive of rent. Other amounts were proposed for families of different sizes and compositions. Townsend argues that subsequent studies employed the same approach with minor alterations, adjustments made only for price changes. He then concludes that changes in the conditions of life brought about in the intervening years were ignored in all these analyses (The World Bank, 2000; Townsend, 1954, p. 130, 1962, 2010).
Rowntree, it is noted, made some modifications to his parameters to include some rather more generous standards of poverty in another study of York in 1936. During this study, the number and characteristics of necessaries where expanded. For instance, compulsory insurance contributions, trade union subscriptions, commuting to and from work, and other daily more general miscellaneous goods such as daily newspapers, some stationery and some other requirements found their way into the analysis. This list of items was revised and applied to the third study of York about poverty and the welfare state in 1951 which was co-conducted by Rowntree and Lavers (Townsend, 1962). In very recent times, the Joseph Rowntree foundation has emerged to continue his works and to carry on with poverty studies with the following objectives:
to re-establish the long national tradition of investigating and measuring the scale and severity of poverty;
to extend this tradition to the modern investigation of social exclusion so that for the first time the relationship between poverty and social exclusion can be examined in depth; and
to contribute to the cross-national investigation of these phenomena, as Britain agreed to do at the World Summit for Social Development in 1995. (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2000, p. 1).
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1.4.1.1 Implications of the income approach for land reforms
Kuklys Wiebke is of the view that the income concepts are very simple to apply. He, however, criticizes the over reliance on household income as opposed to individual income for the determination of poverty lines. He contends that the approach is prone to measurement error because welfare indicators based on households fail to take into account differences in needs among household members as well as intra-household allocation issues. He further critiques the approach for its neglect of critical household welfare issues. He observes that welfare emanating from home-based production, non-market goods and services and in-kind transfers which could form a major part of a household’s consumption basket are disregarded in income poverty estimates. These, he concludes, can lead to distortions of the welfare measure, result in non-comparability and thereby violate the ‘symmetry axiom in social welfare analysis’ (Wiebke, 2005, p. 4).
The income approach has also been dismissed on the grounds that life is not always about money. MacEwan (2007) discusses our wont to describe people as rich or poor based on whether the person receives a high or low income or possesses a large or small amount of material wealth. He suggests that these are all just about money and that while we are often too obsessed with quantum of money, it has become important for some rethinking because it is not always money as such that determines human well-being. Many other socio-cultural elements that can only be appreciated by individuals also play a crucial role. He is, however, quick to add that as long as money remains a measure of the goods and services that one can buy at any material point in time, and given the relationships between commodities, goods and services, using income as a measure of well-being cannot be seen as unreasonable (MacEwan, 2007, p. 3).
In the wake of the criticisms against the income approach, I am of the conviction that it is incapable of application in the land reforms space. It is too obsessed with income as
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opposed to how humans ought to live together. Land reforms crafted along the income concepts are bound to fail because of their over-reliance on liberalism and the monetization of the resource space. It even holds the potential of further impoverishing the poor who have not the resources to buy land. Land ownership by the poor is a source of subsistence but once deprived of their land through monetary based reforms and transactions, the poor might get confined to wage earning and starvation.