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Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, CH (7 July 1871 – 7 October 1954) was an English sociological researcher, social reformer and industrialist. He is known in particular for his three studies of poverty in York, conducted in 1899, 1935, and 1951.
The first York study involved a comprehensive survey of the living conditions of the poor in York during which investigators visited every working class household, and his methodology inspired many subsequent researches in British empirical sociology."Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree." World of Sociology, Gale, 2001. Gale In Context: Biography
. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019. (2026). 9780415352604, Routledge. ISBN 9780415352604
By strictly defining the concept of poverty in his studies, he was able to reveal that the causes of poverty in York were more structural than moral, such as low wages, which went against the traditionally held view that the poor were responsible for their own plight. Joseph Rowntree Foundation Centenary: Poverty
In 1897 he married Lydia Potter (1868/9–1944), daughter of Edwin Potter, an engineer; they had four sons and one daughter. After his wife died, he lived in a wing of Former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's old house, Hughenden Manor, where he died after a heart attack in 1954. He was 83 years old.
In Rowntree's work, he surveyed working-class families in York and drew a poverty line in terms of a minimum weekly sum of money "necessary to enable families... to secure the necessaries of a healthy life" (quoted in Coates and Silburn, 1970). The money needed for this subsistence level of existence covered fuel and light, rent, food, clothing, household and personal items, adjusted according to family size. He determined this level using social scientific methods which had not been applied to the study of poverty before. For example, he consulted leading of the period to discover the minimum calorific intake and nutritional balance necessary before people got ill or lost weight. He then surveyed the prices of food in York to find the cheapest prices in the area for purchasing the food required by this minimum diet and used this information to set his poverty line.
According to this measure, 27.84 percent of the total population of York lived below the poverty line.Rowntree, B S: "Poverty: A Study in Town Life", page 298. Macmillan, 1901 This result corresponded with that from Charles Booth's study of poverty in London and so challenged the view, commonly held at the time, that abject poverty was a problem particular to London and was not widespread in the rest of Britain. Rowntree's (1901) statistics have since been challenged by other sociological researchers such as Gazeley and Newell (2000) who argued he "overestimated the needs of children relative to adults and did not allow for economies of scale", resulting in inflated measurement of primary poverty.Gazeley, I. and Newell, A., ‘Rowntree revisited: poverty in Britain, 1900’,Explorations in Economic History,37(2000), p.187.
He placed those below his poverty line into two groups depending on the reason for their poverty. Those in primary poverty did not have enough income to meet the expenditure necessary for their basic needs. Those classed as in secondary poverty had high enough income to meet basic needs but some portion of this money was being spent elsewhere (such as on drink, gambling, and betting) and so they were unable to then afford the necessities of life.Rowntree, B S: "Poverty: A Study in Town Life", pages 295–296. Macmillan, 1901
Setting a primary poverty line for which "expenditure needful for the development of the mortal, moral and social sides of human nature will not be taken into account'' (136) did not mean that he did not recognise the non-subsistence need of the working class. Rather, he wished to measure a type of poverty that could not be reduced simply by greater "thrift", so as to cast off the contemporary social myth about poverty as one's own fault. Ironically, this primary poverty line also helped many manufactures to set the lowest possible minimum wage, which engendered many criticisms toward him.
In analysing the results of the investigation he found that people at certain stages of life, for example in old age and early childhood, were more likely to be in abject poverty, living below the poverty line, than at other stages of life. From this he formulated the idea of the poverty cycleSearle, G R: "A New England?", page 196. Oxford University Press, 2004 in which some people moved in and out of absolute poverty during their lives. This idea of poverty cycle captured important longitudinal aspects of poverty that were cited later in much other research.
Despite the inclusion of the extra items, he found that the percentage of his sample population in poverty had dropped to 18 per cent in 1936 and to 1.5 per cent in 1950.
By the 1950s, it appeared that absolute poverty was a minor problem although poverty did remain, for example among the elderly, but it was believed that increased welfare benefits would soon eradicate this lingering poverty. The conquest of poverty was put down to an expanding economy as the 1950s were the years of the 'affluent society', to government policies of full employment, and to the success of the welfare state. It was widely believed that the operation of the welfare state had redistributed wealth from rich to poor and significantly raised working class living standards.
His work The Human Needs of Labour (1918) argued for family allowances and a national minimum wage, and in The Human Factor in Business, Rowntree argued that business owners should adopt more democratic practices like those at his own factory rather than more autocratic leadership styles. He expressed his conviction of the possibility of establishing a close-knit community including both the management and the workers.
In the study of his later period, English Life and Leisure: A Social Study (1951), he inquired into the ways people spent their relative, newly-found leisure and income; but this work suffered more conceptual difficulties than his former works.
Rowntree was also personally involved in two major conciliation efforts following strikes in 1919 and 1926.
In 1947 when the British Institute of Management was created he became an Honorary Founder Member and in 1952 the first English person to become an Honorary Fellow of the institute.Briggs, Asa: Social Thought and Social Action, page 231.
Rowntree was a great believer in trained specialists, and employed many at the Cocoa Works.Child, John. British Management Thought (Routledge Revivals): A Critical Analysis. Routledge, 2012. They included Oliver Sheldon, Lyndall Urwick and Dr Clarence Northcott. The Works was a corporate member of the Taylor Society and was admired by its President Henry S. Dennison.Robert Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the marketing revolution, 1862-1969(1995)
Seebohm oversaw the formation of an industrial psychology department in 1922 which pioneered the use of psychological recruitment tests in British industry. Employing psychologist Victor Moorrees Making the Modern World – Studying work who developed a new test, the form board selection test, to ascertain how well prospective employees would be able to fit chocolates into their box.Bunn G: "New Scientist", 174 (2345) 1 June 2002, p. 50-1
He was also heavily involved in the National Institute of Industrial Psychology serving on its executive committee from its foundation in 1921, as chairman from 1940 to 1947, until his resignation in 1949.cited in Briggs, Asa: Social Thought and Social Action, page 231.Doyle, D.C., 'Aspects of the Institutionalisation of British Psychology: the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, 1921-1939' (PhD thesis, Manchester University, 1979).
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