When researching the phrase that stood out to me the most was the use of the words ‘the poverty line’ which is how they measure poverty. You can tell if you are in poverty or if anyone else by understanding the poverty line.
Data based on incomes published in 2016 by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that, after housing costs have been taken into consideration, the number of people living in the UK in relative poverty to be 13.44m (21% of the population).
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. Determining the poverty line is usually done by finding the total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year.
https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/measuring-poverty
Each year, the Government publishes a survey of income poverty in the UK called Households Below Average income (HBAI). This survey sets the poverty line in the UK at 60 per cent of the median UK household income. In other words, if a household’s income is less than 60 per cent of this average, HBAI considers them to be living in poverty. This is the definition of relative poverty, whereas absolute poverty is where a household’s income is less than 60 per cent of the median as it stood in 2011.
One in five households in the UK have an income below the poverty line, after their housing costs are taken into account. 30 per cent of children live in households below the poverty line (after housing costs). This is almost double the poverty rate (16 per cent) for pensioners.
Calculating poverty after housing costs give a more accurate measure of how much families have to live on.
In the 1970s and 1980s, income inequality in the UK widened rapidly and the gap has remained wide since. Nearly all the increases in our national income have gone to people in the upper half of our income distribution, leaving the top fifth between five and six times better off than the bottom fifth.
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