The Institute for Fiscal Studies has reported-
● by 2017 8 million people in the UK living in working households were in relative poverty.
● Between 1994 and 2017 there was an increase from 13% to 18% in the proportion of people in working households living in relative poverty (that’s an increase of 40%).
They say the rise in in work poverty is due to-
● the big falls in worklessness since the mid-1990s have brought many more
low earning types of households – such as lone parents – into work
● the rapid growth in average pensioner incomes over the last 25 years has pushed up median income, and therefore the relative poverty line (defined as 60% of the median).
● Increased earnings inequality
● Fast growth in housing costs for lower income working households caused by increases in private and social rents, lower housing benefit and declines in homeownership
Absolute income poverty was 19% in 2017–18, unchanged from the previous year, but has fallen gradually since 2011–12 when it was 22%.
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