Living in cuts-and-austerity Britain is generating the same anxieties as those expressed by the Edwardian poor, claims the Salvation Army

Times change, but poverty is always with us, and so is fear of poverty.

A Salvation Army-commissioned You Gov poll suggests that Coalition-era British families have precisely the same material worries as their forebears 100 years ago: that they will not have enough cash for food, clothes and a roof over their head.

This isn't entirely surprising. I suspect that a poll of ordinary British families in 1812 and 1712 would have pinpinted the same concerns.

But the poll of over 2,000 UK adults contains some interesting pointers as to where contemporary austerity-era households are feeling the pressure most acutely, and it echoes some of the findings of our own Breadline Britain investigation.

The findings include:

• One fifth of adults with children aged under 16 said that their main worry was affording basic needs like food and clothing. A further 20% said debt was their principle concern.

• A fifth of all adults were worried about affordable housing, and 21% were worried about being able to pay the mortgage or rent.

• One in 10 adults said they were currently worried that they would be unable to provide three nutritious meals for themselves or their family every day.

• Nearly a third of adults said they were concerned they would not be able to afford essential household replacements, such as a cooker, bed or fridge.

Overall, just 4% of adults said they were worried about losing their home. In the north of England the figure was 3%, but in London (where housing costs are highest and housing benefit reform effects most draconian) it is a fear expressed by 13%. By the same token, worries about not being able to afford the rent or mortgage were pretty similar across the country, at 20-25%.

Just over a quarter (26%) of people who were working full-time said they worried about being able to pay their mortgage or rent.

Being unemployed, naturally, is more likely to generate higher levels of anxiety, across almost all questions. Of those jobless adults with children under 16, for example, 37% say their main fear is being able to afford food and clothing.

But earning a wage does not erase those concerns: 17% of working adults with children under 16 who work (full or part time) worried they may not be able to put a meal on the table, and 10% of all working adults worried that providing three nutritious meals a days was beyond them.

The same goes for household essentials. Some 43% of unemployed adults said they worried that if the cooker or fridge packed up they would be unable to replace it. But nearly a third of people in work shared the same concern. The findings further questions the notion that a job automatically insulates against poverty.

The survey is a snapshot, and it is impossible to tell from it whether anxiety levels are rising as the downturn continues, benefit cuts hit home, living costs rise and incomes shrink (though one might make a reasonable assumption that they are). But it confirms significant numbers of British people, working or jobless, fear they are on - or about to arrive at - the poverty cliff edge.