Read The Living Standards Audit 2018 here.
Originally published at https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-living-standards-audit-2018/
With Stephen Clarke, Conor D’Arcy & John Wood
Very quick summary:
- Looks in detail at one of the problems with existing household income data: the fact that tens of billions of pounds of benefit spending seems to be missing, and that this has got worse over time
- For the first time, attempts to (roughly) correct for this problem, changing what we know about household incomes, inequality and poverty since 1994
- Shows that child poverty fell considerably faster than thought in the early 2000s and that the government likely even hit its 2004 poverty target
- Updates RF’s 2017-18 household income ‘nowcast’ – which we do because official data won’t be out until 2019 – pointing to poor growth and rising child poverty last year.