On the Effectiveness of the

Workhouse as an
Anti-Poverty Measure
Short Paper 1
GEEVA GOPAL KRISHNAN

Geeva Gopalkrishnan
Econ-156: Poverty
Professor Ravallion
September 23, 2014

On the Effectiveness of the Workhouse as an Anti-Poverty Measure

Concerned over pauperism, workhouses were widely used as an anti-poverty measure in the
16th to 18th centuries in Britain. This paper, first, describes the nature of workhouses and
discusses the conditions that lead to the introduction of such workhouses. The paper, later,
assesses the effectiveness of the workhouse as an anti-poverty measure by listing the intrinsic
and functional advantages and disadvantages of the workhouse.
Workhouses were large centralized institutions in which the poor were incarcerated
(housed) and fed, in exchange for their labor. The inception of the workhouse can be traced
to the Poor Law Act of 1388, which resulted in the state being responsible for the provision
for the impoverished (Nassau, 1834). Workhouses were identified to be a viable
employment scheme that could solve the issue of poverty and economic dislocation, and
thus publicly financed workhouses emerged to be the prevalent form of poor relief available
in this period. (Ravallion, 2014). The prevailing notion that population growth was in large
part due to the moral weaknesses of the poor (ibid) led to the growth of socio-political
pressure to reform the poor relief system and the morals of the poor throughout the 1690s1.
Thus, workhouses evolved to inure the poor to labour and inculcate a religious and
industrious life in poor children.
However, the high costs involved with providing for poor relief, as well as
maintaining the centralized institutions, resulted in significant opposition against the
functions of the workhouses (ibid). The Poor Laws had become a fiscal burden on the
politically powerful landholding class. Expenditure on poor relief accounted for less than 1
per cent of the GDP in 1696 and rose to 2 per cent by 1800, and the proportion that was
covered by relief rose from about 3.5 per cent of the population in the early 18th Century to
14 per cent by the end of the century (Slack, 1990). This increasing cost led to the formation
of the Workhouse Test Act of 1723, a legislative framework that drastically reduced the

functions of the workhouse and tightened the rules of access, shaped by perceptions that
pauperism merited condemnation, and blame. Parochial workhouses expanded following the
Act and parishes were allowed to refuse relief to any able-bodied applicant who was
unwilling to enter into the workhouse. The level of relief was also set to be lower than the
standard of life that could be gained from the lowest wage the market would offer outside2.
This reflected widespread concern that the poor might see relief as their right, and the shame
and dependency associated with workhouses were thought to weed out individuals unworthy
of relief.
The workhouses were arguably advantageous as an anti-poverty measure due to the
improvement in literacy and healthcare conferred to those who entered it. Reportedly, the
workhouse inmates were advantaged over the general population with respect to the
provision of free medical care and education for children, neither of which was readily
accessible to the general population living outside workhouses, lest the landowners, until the
early 20th century (Gordon et. al, 2002).
Moreoever, under conditions of fiscal burden due to the unsustainable poor relief
system, the workhouses also proved to be a useful screening measure for self-targeted
relief to the destitute. The British poor law workhouses were intended to be deterrent
institutions, designed to enforce less eligibility by making the claiming of relief as unpleasant
as possible thus filtering out the deserving from the undeserving.
In addition, the workhouse was an advantageous anti-poverty measure for it provided
a degree of protection in times of destitution. This is supported by claims that workhouses
had helped improve the human condition of the destitute through housing and nutrition,
and helped improve the mortality of individuals who are impoverished due to harvest failures
(Ravallion, 2014).

Intrinsically, however, the workhouse is an unappealing anti-poverty measure due to

the degrading effect it has on rights of the individual. The requirement that the able-bodied
poor and his family had to be provided relief only within the workhouse rendered the poor
stigmatized and stripped off their civil liberties upon entering the workhouse.
In addition, the fact that the relief system was designed to prevent starvation rather
than poverty renders it an ineffective anti-poverty measure. As mentioned above, the level of
relief was set to be lower than that of the poorest laborer in the market, and hence did little as
a measure to reduce poverty in the society. The emphasis on reducing the number of
individuals on the relief payroll reduced the positive effects the workhouse could have
achieved against poverty (Nassau, 1834).
A good anti-poverty contains both protective and preventive elements. While the
workhouse minimally fulfilled the requirement of a protective policy, it did not fulfill the
criteria for preventive policy. This was in part due to the fact that poverty was recognized to
be caused by the individual, rather than structural causes. The workhouse did little to prevent
more individuals from falling into poverty, and merely provided minimal provision to the
destitute who were willing to partake in its program.

Works Cited
Gordon et. al, Anti-Poverty Policies for Guernsey. 2002
Nassaeu, 1834: http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=1461
Fabian Society, Fighting Poverty and Inequality in an Age of Affluence. 2012.
http://www.fabians.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2012/04/backup/FromWorkhousetoWelfare.pdf#page=84

References
1

http://www.londonlives.org/static/Workhouses.jsp#fn1_1
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3913/1/One_hundred_years_of_poverty.pdf

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/poverty/downloads/regionalpovertystudies/02_GLS-3.pdf
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/newpoorlaw.shtml#End
http://www.kingsnorton.info/time/poor_law_workhouse_timeline.htm