300,000 more people live in poverty than previously thought, study finds
Many of the issues for the poorer in society here apply to the rural elderly as much as urban families – read on and see if you agree:
A report produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that soaring prices for food and fuel over the past decade have had a bigger impact on struggling families who spend more of their budgets on staple goods.
By contrast, richer households had been the beneficiaries of the drop in mortgage rates and lower motoring costs.
The study by the IFS for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said the government method for calculating absolute poverty – the number of people living below a breadline that rises each year in line with the cost of living – assumed that all households faced the same inflation rate.
But in the six years from early 2008 to early 2014, the cost of energy had risen by 67% and the cost of food by 32%. Over the same period the retail prices index – a measure of the cost of a basket of goods and services – had gone up by 22%.
The IFS report said the poorest 20% of households spent 8% of their budgets on energy and 20% on food, while the richest 20% spent 4% on energy and 11% on food.