BOOTH--WILSON

In his discussion of the apparent relationship between experiencing poverty and living in overcrowded space, Charles Booth acknowledges the flaw in the method of measurement: "we are compelled by our method to treat the desire for sufficient house accommodation as a force acting uniformly or proportionately on all, but this is by no means always the case" (5). This leaves quite a few people out: the minimalists that have no interest in big homes, those that feel as if family beds are a symbol of closeness, etc. I lived briefly with a family of five in India that shared two sleeping pads each night--and they had other rooms and beds readily available, mostly used for International volunteers! I asked one of the daughters one evening if she got tired of having no space, only to realise how stupid my question was--the two of us had completely different ideas of space and the "personal bubble." To her, I was poorer for not having someone with whom to curl up and I was encouraged to nap alongside the family once we'd finished lunch together.

Now, this crowding and 19th century London crowding are very different--the public health concerns in London differed greatly from those in rural Pudukkottai, for example, so poverty was not an immediate health-risk--but it does beg the question of what qualifies as "sufficient" house room or wealth? What standards apply? "Sufficiency" and its implications for conceptualising house-holding was a point raised in previous readings. Also, in thinking about methods for measuring household make-ups or economies, etc, how much leeway should be allowed for those that don't fit the norm? If poverty was equated to decreased quality of life and over-crowding implied lesser length of life due to the spread of disease and the lack of interventions, perhaps measuring the ratio of persons to rooms, for all of its faults, would be a most effective measure of quality of poverty.