Memoir on Pauperism
by Alexis de Tocqueville, Seymour Drescher
Category: History

This piece was written in 1835 immediately after Alexis de Tocqueville had completed the first volume of Democracy in America. It was based on his visit to England in 1833, where he found that one-sixth of the population had been reduced to reliance on poor relief at a cost approaching nearly one-fifth of the total national expenditure. Today, 17% of Britain's population are reliant on income support -- a strikingly similar proportion to Toqueville's 1833 estimate. In her introduction, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of the foremost historians of the nineteenth century, shows the relevance of Toqueville's insights to the debates of today about welfare reform in both Britain and America.