Abstract
This paper denotes that the concepts of the social stratum greatly diferenciated in the course of researches of poverty by several authors.
In our country, the studies of poverty started from the analysis of the house expenditures to the living structures and then to the principles of the social stratum. These authors were eminently influenced by Ernst Engel, Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree. For example, prof. Kagoyama and prof. Chubachi are the followers of living structure theory, and prof. Eguchi explains the developmental treatment about the social stratum. By arranging these studies, it may be clarified that these authors above-mentioned greatly emphasized upon the differences about social stratum rather than the relations between social strata.
In this connection, it may be seen that these authors greatly resemble those of American socialist's school i. e., the analytical treatment with the compound indices. Hitherto on the poverty studies, it can be said, the approaches of the stratum relations merely explain the existence structures of the relative surplus-population.
