Real household disposable income per person in the United Kingdom is expected to grow by 2.6 percent in 2024/25, with disposable income growth slowing from that point onwards. In 2022/23, disposable income fell by two percent, after falling by 0.1 percent in 2021/22, and 0.3 percent in 2020/21.

The Poverty and Social Exclusion Living Standards Survey provided crucial information about the living standards experienced by UK households, with particular interest in issues of income inequality, poverty and social exclusion. Survey fieldwork was conducted separately in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland. In Great Britain the study was conducted by the NatCen Social Research on behalf of the University of Bristol. In Northern Ireland the study was conducted by Central Survey Unit (CSU) of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) on behalf of Queen's University Belfast.

Estimates of how the coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted income and affordability in Great Britain. Data are from the Survey on Living Conditions (SLC).

This is a quantitative data collection. This study aimed to collect comprehensive information on all forms of resources (including income and assets) and indicative information on deprivation and style of living in order to define and measure poverty among a representative sample of the population of the United Kingdom. This major study was the result of fifteen years research. In 1964 the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust agreed to finance pilot studies on fatherless families, large families and unemployed and disabled people which were then to be followed by a national survey of poverty. In 1967-68, following pilot work, interviews were completed with 2,052 households (6,045 people), in 630 parliamentary constituencies throughout the United Kingdom. Another 1,514 households (3,539 people), were later interviewed in a poor area of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales to secure information about the populations of the poorest areas. There were mixed reactions to the book’s publication in 1979. The concept of relative deprivation provoked much discussion but the issue of multiple deprivation experienced by individuals and families was largely ignored. Comparatively little attention was paid to certain forms of deprivation - such as deprivation at work and environmental or locational deprivation - although the report gave data about multiple deprivation drawn from 60 indicators. Nearly 50 years later this study was reanalysed in a project funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The ‘Advancing Paradata’ project looked at shifts and continuities in the social process of gathering household survey data about poverty. In part it does this through analysis of survey paradata from the 1968 Poverty in the UK survey. Paradata captures the gamut of by-products of the collection of survey data and is of interest in understanding and improving survey quality and costs. The main focus has been on automatically captured macro items, but this is now expanding to include interviewer-generated observations. For the ‘Advancing Paradata’ project, information available only on paper questionnaires at the UK Data Archive was converted into digitised form and related metadata was created. A sample of 100 survey booklets has been selected for this collection. These booklets were chosen because they have significant quantities of marginalia written on the booklets. These booklets are available via the UK Data Service QualiBank, an online tool for browsing, searching and citing the content of selected qualitative data collections held at the UK Data Service. Names of survey respondents have been removed to protect confidentiality.

This project investigated the roles of the welfare state, education, reductions in family size, and improvements in real wages in the elimination of poverty in Britain, 1904-54. The key national data sets for this analysis are household expenditure surveys for 1904, 1937/8 and 1953/4. The 1953/4 survey is the largest of the twentieth century (12,900 households) and survives in its entirety at The National Archives. It was carried out before the affluence of the Golden Age had been widely distributed. Abel-Smith and Townsend used some of this survey for their The Poor and the Poorest (1965), which was influential in setting the social policy agenda of the 1960s. The project digitised the 1953/4 survey and exploited these early twentieth century surveys to analyse poverty, nutrition and overcrowding among working households in Britain. A web-based centre on living standards provides information on the changing economic circumstances of households. It also allows access to the data, which have a number of other important long-term potential uses for social research.

The Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data presents information on living standards in the UK based on household income measures for the financial year.

HBAI uses equivalised disposable household income as a proxy for living standards in order to allow comparisons of the living standards of different types of households (that is, income is adjusted to take into account variations in the size and composition of the households in a process known as equivalisation). A key assumption made in HBAI is that all individuals in the household benefit equally from the combined income of the household. This enables the total equivalised income of the household to be used as a proxy for the standard of living of each household member.

In line with international best practice, the income measures used in HBAI are subject to several statistical adjustments and, as such, are not always directly relatable to income amounts as they might be understood by people on a day-to-day basis. These adjustments, however, allow consistent comparison over time and across households of different sizes and compositions. HBAI uses variants of CPI inflation when estimating how incomes are changing in real terms over time.

The main data source used in this study is the Family Resources Survey (FRS), a continuous cross-sectional survey. The FRS normally has a sample of 19,000 - 20,000 UK households. The use of survey data means that HBAI estimates are subject to uncertainty, which can affect how changes should be interpreted, especially in the short term. Analysis of geographies below the regional level is not recommended from this data.

Further information and the latest publication can be found on the gov.uk HBAI webpage. The HBAI team want to provide user-friendly datasets and clearer documentation, so please contact team.hbai@dwp.gov.uk if you have any suggestions or feedback on the new harmonised datasets and documentation.

An earlier HBAI study, Institute for Fiscal Studies Households Below Average Income Dataset, 1961-1991, is held under SN 3300.

Latest Edition Information

For the 19th edition (April 2025), resamples data have been added to the study alongside supporting documentation. Main data back to 1994/95 have been updated to latest-year prices, and the documentation has been updated accordingly.

Using the HBAI files

Users should note that either 7-Zip or a recent version of WinZip is needed to unzip the HBAI download zip files, due to their size. The inbuilt Windows compression software will not handle them correctly.

Labelling of variables
Users should note that many variables across the resamples files do not include full variable or value labels. This information can be found easily in the documentation - see the Harmonised Data Variables Guide.

HBAI versions

The HBAI datasets are available in two versions at the UKDS:

1. End User Licence (EUL) (Anonymised) Datasets:

These datasets contain no names, addresses, telephone numbers, bank account details, NINOs or any personal details that can be considered disclosive under the terms of the ONS Disclosure Control guidance. Changes made to the datasets are as follows:

• All ages above 80 are instead top-coded to 80 years of age.
• The variable for the amount of Council Tax liability for the household and pensioner flags for the head and spouse have been removed.
• All amount variables have been rounded to the nearest £1.
• A very small number of large households (with 10 or more individuals) have been removed from the dataset.

2. Secure Access Datasets:

Secure Access datasets for HBAI are held under SN 7196. The Secure Access data are not subject to the same edits as the EUL version and are, therefore, more disclosive and subject to strict access conditions. They are currently only available to UK HE/FE applicants. Prospective users of the Secure Access version of the HBAI must fulfil additional requirements beyond those associated with the EUL datasets.

The Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom project is the largest research project of its kind ever carried out in the UK. It examines levels of deprivation in the UK today. The research aims to answer the following questions:

• What are the best methods for measuring poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and standard of living?
• How are the different dimensions of poverty, deprivation and social exclusion related?
• What is the current extent and nature of poverty and how has it changed?
• What policies best address these problems?

• Firstly, two major surveys into the public's perceptions of necessities and into living standards were carried out in 2012/13: an attitudinal UK Omnibus survey, gathering the public's perceptions of necessities and attitudes to services (held under SN 7878); and a large-scale survey of living standards to examine the nature, extent and causes of deprivation and social exclusion (SN 7879).
• In addition, two qualitative research studies have been undertaken: an investigation into the experiences of living on low income during recession in Gloucestershire, the West Midlands and Strathclyde (SN 7877); and an exploration of the role of the family when coping with poverty in Northern Ireland.

In the first quarter of 2025, ** percent of people in the East of England were on track for at least Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) minimum retirement living standards. That made the East of England the region in the United Kingdom with the highest share of people on track. In contrast, Northern Ireland and North-East England were the regions with the lowest share of people on track for the minimum retirement standards, with only ** percent of people on track.

About the dataset This dataset uses information from the DWP benefit system to provide estimates of children living in poverty for wards in London. In order to be counted in this dataset, a family must have claimed Child Benefit and at least one other household benefit (Universal Credit, tax credits or Housing Benefit) during the year. The numbers are calibrated to the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) dataset used to provide the government's headline poverty statistics. The definition of relative low income is living in a household with equivalised* income before housing costs (BHC) below 60% of contemporary national median income. The income measure includes contributions from earnings, state support and pensions. Further detail on the estimates of dependent children living in relative low income, including alternative geographical breakdowns and additional variables, such as age of children, family type and work status are available from DWP's statistical tabulation tool Stat-Xplore. Minor adjustments to the data have been applied to guard against the identification of individual claimants. This dataset replaced the DWP children in out-of-work benefit households and HMRC children in low income families local measure releases. This dataset includes estimates for all wards in London of numbers of dependent children living in relative low income families for each financial year from 2014/15 to the latest available (2022/23). The figures for the latest year are provisional and are subject to minor revision when the next dataset is released by DWP. Headlines Number of children The number of dependent children living in relative low income across London, rose from below 310,000 in the financial year ending 2015 to over 420,000 in the financial year ending 2020, but has decreased since then to below 350,000, which is well below the number for financial year ending 2018. While many wards in London have followed a similar pattern, the numbers of children in low income families in some wards have fallen more sharply, while the numbers in other wards have continued to grow. Proportion of children in each London ward Ward population sizes vary across London, the age profile of that population also varies and both the size and make-up of the population can change over time, so in order to make more meaningful comparisons between wards or over time, DWP have also published rates, though see note below regarding caution when using these figures. A dependent child is anyone aged under 16; or aged 16 to 19 in full-time non-advanced education or in unwaged government training. Ward level estimates for the total number of dependent children are not available, so percentages cannot be derived. Ward level estimates for the percentage of children under 16 living in low income families are usually published by DWP but, in its latest release, ward-level population estimates were not available at the time, so no rates were published. To derive the rates in this dataset, the GLA has used the ONS's latest ward-level population estimates (official statistics in development). Percentages for 2021/22 are calculated using the 2021 mid year estimates, while percentages for 2022/23 are calculated using the 2022 mid year estimates. As these are official statistics in development, rates therefore need to be treated with some caution. Notes *equivalised income is adjusted for household size and composition in order to compare living standards between households of different types.

In 2024, gross domestic product per capita in the United Kingdom was 40,172 British pounds, compared with 40,162 pounds in the previous year. In general, while GDP per capita has grown quite consistently throughout this period, there are noticeable declines, especially between 2007 and 2009, and between 2019 and 2020, due to the Global Financial Crisis, and COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Why is GDP per capita stagnating when the economy is growing? During the last two years that GDP per capita fell and then stagnated in the UK, the overall economy grew by 0.4 percent in 2023 and 1.1 percent in 2024. While the overall UK economy is therefore larger than it was in 2022, the UK's population has grown at a faster rate, resulting in the lower GDP per capita figure. The long-term slump in the UK's productivity, as measured by output per hour worked, has meant that the gap between GDP growth and GDP per capita growth has been widening for some time. Economy remains the main concern of UK voters As of February 2025, the economy was seen as the main issue facing the UK, just ahead of immigration, health, and several other problems in the country. While Brexit was seen as the most important issue before COVID-19, and concerns about health were dominant throughout 2020 and 2021, the economy has generally been the primary facing voters issue since 2022. The surge in inflation throughout 2022 and 2023, and the impact this had on wages and living standards, resulted in a very tough period for UK households. As of January 2025, 57 percent of households were still noticing rising living costs, although this is down from a peak of 91 percent in August 2022.

The TLSS was part of the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and aimed to understand the welfare of Tajik individuals and households. Cross-sectional TLSSs were conducted on households in Tajikistan in 1999, 2003, and 2007. Of the 4,860 households surveyed in 2007, 1,500 of these were followed up in 2009.

The VHLSS aims to monitor living standards, the effectiveness of government strategy, and socio-economic development goals in Vietnam. The sample size in 2022 included almost 47,000 households from across Vietnam. Household heads, household members, and key commune officials were interviewed. The study was known as the Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS) for the two initial surveys in 1993 and 1998. In 2002, changes were made to the format of the study, and it was renamed as VHLSS. From 2002 to 2010, VHLSS was conducted every two years. Since 2011, VHLSS has been conducted annually.

The purpose of this study, compiled by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), was to provide a consistent description of household incomes and characteristics between 1961-1991, enabling a comprehensive analysis of the trend in poverty, inequality and real living standards in the UK over the last thirty years. The study was extended in 2020 to include data from 1992 and 1993. The Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data are compiled from the Family Expenditure Survey (FES) (held at the UKDA under GN 33057), in this case from 1961-1993.

Households Below Average Income data, with coverage from 1994-1995 onwards, are held at the UKDA under GN 33383. Data and documentation from the HBAI series is also available from the Department for Work and Pensions' "http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/hbai/hbai2006/contents.asp" title="Households Below Average Income" style=""> Households Below Average Income web page.

For the second edition (February 2020), data files for 1992 and 1993 were added. The original data and documentation were also updated to the latest file formats.

HBAI provides information on potential living standards in the UK as determined by net disposable income (equivalised). HBAI enables the analysis of changes in income patterns over time.

Latest edition information

For the 15th edition (April 2025), resamples data have been added to the study alongside supporting documentation. Main data back to 1994/95 have been updated to latest-year prices, and the documentation has been updated accordingly.

Users should note that the Secure Access versions of the Family Resources Survey and Pensioners' Incomes statistics data, previously held together with HBAI, have been moved to SNs 9256 and 9257, respectively. Users should note that some documentation may still refer to 'Safe Room' rather than 'Secure Access'.

In April 2026, the UK minimum wage for adults over the age of 21 will be 12.71 pounds per hour. For the 2026/27 financial year, there are four minimum wage categories, three of which are based on age and one for apprentice workers. Apprentices, and workers under the age of 18 will have a minimum wage of eight pounds an hour, increasing to 10.85 pounds for those aged 18 to 20. When the minimum wage was first introduced in 1999, there were just two age categories; 18 to 21, and 22 and over. This increased to three categories in 2004, four in 2010, and five between 2016 and 2023, before being reduced down to four in the most recent year. The living wage The living wage is an alternative minimum wage amount that employers in the UK can voluntarily pay their employees. It is calculated independently of the legal minimum wage and results in a higher value figure. In 2023/24, for example, the living wage was twelve pounds an hour for the UK as a whole and 13.15 for workers in London, where the cost of living is typically higher. This living wage is different from what the UK government has named the national living wage, which was 10.42 in the same financial year. Between 2011/12 and 2023/24, the living wage has increased by 4.80 pounds, while the London living wage has grown by 4.85 pounds. Wage growth cancelled-out by high inflation 2021-2023 For a long period between the middle of 2021 and late 2023, average wage growth in the UK was unable to keep up with record inflation levels, resulting in the biggest fall in disposable income since 1956. Although the UK government attempted to mitigate the impact of falling living standards through a series of cost of living payments, the situation has still been very difficult for households. After peaking at 11.1 percent in October 2022, the UK's inflation rate remained in double figures until March 2023, and did not fall to the preferred rate of two percent until May 2024. As of November 2024, regular weekly pay in the UK was growing by 5.6 percent in nominal terms, and 2.5 percent when adjusted for inflation.