Influenced earlier by positivism, he embarked in 1886 on the major survey of London life and labor for which he became famous and is commonly regarded as initiating the systematic study of poverty in Britain. Booth was critical of the existing statistical data on poverty. By analyzing census returns he argued that they were unsatisfactory and later sat on a committee in 1891 which suggested improvements that could be made to them. Due to the scale of the survey, results were published serially but it took over fifteen years before the full seventeen volume edition was published. His work on the study and his concern with the problems of poverty led to an involvement in campaigning for old-age pensions and promoting the decasualization of labour.