“Three important claims can be made for the book:

  • It had a remarkable impact on public understanding of poverty as well as on attitudes to the poor;
  • It immediately had an impact on policy, influencing the spate of social reform enacted by the Liberal  Government after 1906;
  • Rowntree, in Poverty, established the British tradition of empirical social science research; he also established the tradition of social research designed to inform policy – to achieve what today is being called  ‘evidence-based policy’. “

From the introduction to the centennial publication of ‘Poverty’

by Jonathan Bradshaw (2000)