Unsung Britain· Living standards· Demographics Unsung Britain The changing economic circumstances of the poorer half of Britain 13 November 2024 by Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy and Cara Pacitti and Hannah Slaughter and James Smith and Lalitha Try This report marks the launch of Unsung Britain, a one-year research programme designed to understand the economic circumstances of today’s low-to-middle income families and how these have changed in recent decades, with support from JPMorganChase. READ MORE
Incomes· Living standards The Living Standards Outlook 2024 29 August 2024 by Alex Clegg and Adam Corlett This is our sixth annual Living Standards Outlook. It provides an assessment of incomes, poverty and inequality as things stand in 2024-25, and projections up to 2029-30 using economic forecasts and policy assumptions inherited by the new Government. It also explores how three scenarios, based on an optimistic outcome for earnings growth and two illustrative … Continued READ MORE
General Election 2024· Living standards Hard times Assessing household incomes since 2010 28 June 2024 by Adam Corlett and Lalitha Try This briefing note is part of the Resolution Foundation’s ‘Need to Know Election 2024’ series and examines how income growth, poverty and inequality have changed over the last Parliament and since 2010. At the General Election, living standards growth should be on the agenda for any party wishing to form the next government. This is … Continued READ MORE
General Election 2024· Living standards· Intergenerational Centre Old age tendencies The impact of tax and benefit changes on intergenerational fairness ahead of the 2024 general election 26 June 2024 by Molly Broome and Alex Clegg and Sophie Hale and Charlie McCurdy and Lalitha Try In this Spotlight we look at the impact of spending, tax and benefit decisions taken since 2010 through the lens of intergenerational fairness. What stands out in this context is the increase in the generosity of the State Pension, which has led to a £44 billion increase in spending, benefiting older age groups. By contrast, … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Housing Housing Outlook Q1 2024 25 March 2024 by Lindsay Judge and Adam Corlett Welcome to our first Housing Outlook in what looks set to be an election year, and one where housing could well be a prominent issue. This quarter, we consider whether the UK’s housing woes are shared by other developed economies, or if the issues of housing affordability and quality we highlight so frequently are distinctly … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption From merry Christmas to a messy new year What 2024 has in store 29 December 2023 by Torsten Bell 2024 is going to be messy, for our living standards not just politics. The past two years have been dominated by rising energy and food bills, with everyone affected. It will be very different in 2024. Inflation falling back faster than expected means many will benefit from rising real wages. But politicians tempted to claim … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption· Pay· Wellbeing and mental health· Housing Pressure on pay, prices and properties How families were faring in October 2023 14 December 2023 by Mike Brewer and Felicia Odamtten and Hannah Slaughter and Hannah Slocombe and James Smith Two years into the cost of living crisis, inflation has finally turned a corner. The headline rate of CPI inflation has fallen from its October 2022 peak of 11.1 per cent to 4.6 per cent in October 2023, and the Prime Minister has been able to say that his target of halving inflation in 2023 … Continued READ MORE
Economy 2030· Living standards· Incomes· Economic growth From safety net to springboard Designing an unemployment insurance scheme to protect living standards and boost economic dynamism 21 September 2023 by Mike Brewer and Louise Murphy Losing your job in Britain is a very risky business. Low levels of out-of-work benefits are rarely an adequate safety net for those who experience job loss, and workers in the UK who move out of work are at greater risk of experiencing a large income loss than those in most other OECD countries. Some … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Inequality & poverty· Welfare Half time The UK’s commitment to halve poverty by 2030 18 September 2023 by Adam Corlett On 18-19 September, representatives from around the world – including the Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden and the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly – will meet for a UN summit on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals are not just about development in poorer countries: the targets and the discussions around this summit have relevance … Continued READ MORE
Living standards The Living Standards Outlook – Summer 2023 Update 6 September 2023 by Adam Corlett Household incomes are always a crucial perspective on how living standards are changing, particularly during economic crises. And in democracies, changing living standards also matter for politics, particularly ahead of elections. As Ronald Reagan famously put it in 1980, the answer to “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” is often … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Incomes· Prices & consumption Food for thought The role of food prices in the cost of living crisis 19 May 2023 by Torsten Bell and James Smith and Lalitha Try The cost of living crisis is often thought of as a cost of energy crisis. That is an understandable, but increasingly inadequate, view. In particular, it understates the growing role of food prices (up by 25 per cent over the past year and a half) in the squeeze on living standards that households – especially … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption Hoping and coping How families were faring in March 2023 27 April 2023 by Molly Broome and Karl Handscomb and Lalitha Try Families in the UK found themselves in the midst of a cost of living crisis over the winter. Inflation has skyrocketed over the past year, with prices still over 10 per cent higher than a year ago. In response to the squeeze, the Government provided £47 billion of support to households in 2022-23, offsetting around … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Housing Trying times How people living in poor quality housing have fared during the cost of living crisis 15 April 2023 by Lalitha Try Plenty of research has shown the important role housing plays on our living standards, attitudes and wider health and wellbeing. But less attention has been paid to the effect of housing quality on living standards. In this report, we use data collected in March 2023 from an online YouGov survey (funded by The Health Foundation) … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption The only way is down Assessing the impact of falls in wholesale energy prices on household and public finances 7 February 2023 by Emily Fry and James Smith Huge rises in energy prices through much of 2022 sparked a cost of living crisis with recession-level hits to family (as inflation soared) and public finances (as the state partially protected us from bill rises). But there has finally been some good news with wholesale gas prices for 2023-24 down more than 70 per cent … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption The Living Standards Outlook 2023 9 January 2023 by Mike Brewer and Emily Fry and Lalitha Try To deepen our understanding of where the cost of living crisis leaves Britain, our fifth Living Standards Outlook combines a new survey of 10,000 adults’ experience of the crisis with detailed modelling of household incomes and poverty this year and beyond. READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption· Inequality & poverty Costly differences Living standards for working-age people with disabilities 4 January 2023 by Omar El Dessouky and Charlie McCurdy The cost of living crisis has shone a harsh light on different groups’ ability to deal with fast- rising prices. In this briefing note, we focus on the living standards of people with disabilities, including results from a new survey of just under 8,000 working-age adults, over 2,000 of whom reported a long-term illness or … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Labour market New Year’s Outlook 2023 They think it’s all over… it isn’t now 30 December 2022 by Torsten Bell 2022 was a truly horrendous year, dominated by the arrival of double-digit inflation that drove a 3.3 per cent (or £800 per household) hit to real disposable incomes, the biggest annual fall in a century. This has left three-quarters of lower-income working families cutting back this Christmas. Against that difficult backdrop, this note considers what … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Housing Housing Outlook Q3 2022 17 September 2022 by Felicia Odamtten and Daniel Tomlinson With large increases in private rents reported over the last year, this Housing Outlook reflects on the short- and long-term challenges facing the 4.4 million private renting households in England today. READ MORE
Living standards· Public spending· Economy and public finances A blank cheque An analysis of the new cap on energy prices 13 September 2022 by Adam Corlett and Jack Leslie and Jonathan Marshall and James Smith Liz Truss’s first major act as Prime Minister was to set out a huge energy support package to reduce the scale of the living standards’ catastrophe this winter, with the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) as its highlight. The EPG will mean that annual energy prices for the typical household are capped at £2,500 for two … Continued READ MORE
Living standards In at the deep end The living standards crisis facing the new Prime Minister 1 September 2022 by Adam Corlett and Lalitha Try This paper sets out projections for household living standards through to 2026-27. With the UK facing the largest two-year real income fall in at least a century, these forecasts make it clear that a big policy response will be needed from the new government. READ MORE
Living standards· Incomes· Prices & consumption A chilling crisis Policy options to deal with soaring energy prices 25 August 2022 by Mike Brewer and Emily Fry and Karl Handscomb and Jonathan Marshall This briefing note, released just ahead of the announcement of the winter 2022 energy price cap level, looks at the implications of an unprecedented jump in energy costs on low-to-middle income households, stresses the need for urgent and novel policy thinking to lessen this blow, and outlines how this could take shape. READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption· Inequality & poverty Cutting back to keep warm Why low-income households will have to cut back on spending by three times as much as high-income households this winter 15 August 2022 by Karl Handscomb and Jonathan Marshall This winter, low-income households will have to reduce their spending by three times as much as high-income households in order to afford their energy bills – a situation that is particularly concerning now that we know energy bills in January-March 2023 are set to be an annualised £4,266, rather than the £2,800 expected earlier this … Continued READ MORE
Monetary policy· Living standards· Macroeconomic policy In the dread of winter Prospects for inflation in the coming months ahead of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Report 3 August 2022 by Jack Leslie In the face of the highest inflation rate for 40 years, many are predicting that the Bank of England will announce the largest interest rate rise in 27 years this week. This spotlight focuses on the challenges and uncertainties facing both the Bank of England and UK families from rising inflation this winter. Contrary to … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Inequality & poverty The Living Standards Audit 2022 4 July 2022 by Adam Corlett and Felicia Odamtten and Lalitha Try This report, the 14th in an annual series, takes a long view of what has happened to household incomes in Britain over recent decades, what has driven periods of growth and stagnation, and the lessons that need to be learned if Britain is to return to stronger income growth in the decade ahead. The report … Continued READ MORE
Universal Credit· Living standards· Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances· Welfare Back on target Analysis of the Government’s additional cost of living support 27 May 2022 by Torsten Bell and Mike Brewer and Karl Handscomb and Jonathan Marshall and Lalitha Try The Chancellor yesterday announced a big and well-targeted package of energy bill support. Of the £15 billion of new measures, almost double that announced earlier in the year, twice as much will go to households in the bottom half of the income distribution as the top half. This fills the gaping hole left by the … Continued READ MORE
