By Aaron Barbour
Professor Peter Townsend CBE is a don. He literally is as he’s worked in the world of academia for more than 50 years. He’s also been a campaigner and activist, for example he was the founding chair of Child Poverty Action Group and the Disability Alliance.
Peter is 80 this year and there have been various celebrations, including one held on 11th November at the London School of Economics, which I attended. Various speakers including: Ruth Lister, Adrian Sinfield, David Piachaud and Julian LeGrand, who shared their glowing admiration of Peter but also some fascinating insights into the importance of his body of work, re-confirming to me that he is the don.
Following in the footsteps of Charles Booth and Joseph Rowntree, Peter developed the concept of ‘relative poverty’ establishing and defining a measurement of poverty ina way which has now been accepted by the UN and governments around the world. Previously poverty was generally disussed in absolute terms. Thanks to Peter we now readily accept that poverty is relative to society and the country you live in. Poverty is dynamic and not static. It is about income and resources; a move away from solely thinking about poverty in terms of material consumption to being able to fully participate in society. Peter’s multi-dimensional definition of poverty is highlighted in his 1979 seminal work ‘Poverty in the UK’. We have used this work as a reference in completing our latest Social Change Series booklet on Child Poverty.
“Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged and approved, in the societies in which they belong.”
Peter, is his distinguished career (check out some of his latest publications here), has developed and shaped our collective thinking not just about poverty but about human rights, inequalitiy, sustainable livelihoods, social security systems, budget standards and income-threshold measurement, fuel poverty, child poverty, social exclusion, health, disability and age inequalities.
If there was a Nobel Prize for the social sciences then Peter would have won it. Hats off to the don.
Congratulations Peter Townsend! What a huge commitment he has made (and I’m sure will continue to make) to social policy. I’m sure we would be decades behind where we are without him.