The Political Economy of the Poor: The Rise and Fall of the Workhouse System

The aim of this article is to describe the rise and fall of the workhouse system in connection with the developments that took place in economic thought, in the transition from Mercantilism to pre-classical and classical tradition. By examining the economic arguments emerging from the debate around the workhouse system, we shall focus on how ideas concerning wages, efficiency, labour market, workers' mobility, unemployment and human nature of the poor evolved throughout the period under scrutiny, trying to evaluate to what extent these views influenced the shaping of a new policy approach aimed at improving the effectiveness of the delivery of poor relief.