In the 1790s, Frederick Eden, concerned about the economy and the realities of the poor, went into the British countryside and began to collect data on household budgets for poor agricultural laborers. He collected budgets himself, got additional data from “respectable clergymen,” and hired others to get even more. The results were published in a major, groundbreaking work, The State of the Poor, in 1797. In the end, Eden had eighty-six families worth of data.
Read Full Article »
