Evaluation of Townsend’s Deprivation Index
- Townsend’s deprivation index consisted of measuring the percentage of:
- Households without a car
- Overcrowded households
- Households not owner-occupied homes
- Persons unemployed
- Therefore if you were an unemployed person living in an overcrowded household in a home you don’t own and are without a car according to Townsend you were poor
Strengths of Townsend’s deprivation index:
- it challenges the notion of there being universal concept of what constitutes poverty
- it recognises you cannot objectively decide what basic subsistence needs are
- it recognises the poor cannot always shop around to get the cheapest goods
- it recognises the cheapest goods are not always available in the first place
- it recognises social exclusion – how people are social creatures who ‘need’ to socially integrate by buying ‘appropriate’ things such as gifts
- it recognises minimum diets do not recognise different the calorific needs of people. A builder might need more calories than an office worker
Weaknesses of Townsend’s deprivation index are:
- it is said to be measuring inequality rather than poverty
- Wedderburn (1981) said the choice of deprivation indicators was not objective; the index consisted of items which reflected Townsend’s own tastes and values
- Piachaud (1987) argues the deprivation index ignores individual choice as some people might not have the items on Townsend’s list simply because they didn’t want them
sociologytwynham.com 
Leave a Reply