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Household spending in Britain: What can it teach us about poverty?
Household spending in Britain What can it teach us about poverty Author:Mike Brewer, Alissa Goodman, Andrew Leicester Much of the recent policy debate surrounding poverty in Britain focuses on income as a measure of living standards. In this report we consider one alternative to income for measuring poverty that has been largely overlooked in the mainstream poverty debate in the UK: namely household expenditure. Economic theory suggests that household expenditu... more »re is an important measure of financial well-being. Using 30 years of data from household surveys, this report: shows the trends in poverty in Britain since the 1970s when household expenditure is used as a measure of financial well-being, rather than household income; investigates how using spending, rather than income, as a measure of well-being alters our view of who is poor; examines the spending levels of the lowest-income households; and, analyses whether low-income pensioners' spending on basic and non-basic items increased as a result of the large increases in entitlements to means-tested benefits since 1999. The research will be of interest to civil servant policy-makers, academics and researchers working on poverty issues, and other groups with an interest in anti-poverty policies.« less