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 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 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.

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.

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.

Abstract

In 2001, the World Bank in co-operation with the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics (RSIS), the Federal Institute of Statistics (FOS) and the Agency for Statistics of BiH (BHAS), carried out a Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS).

The Living Standard Measurement Survey LSMS, in addition to collecting the information necessary to obtain a comprehensive as possible measure of the basic dimensions of household living standards, has three basic objectives, as follows:

1. To provide the public sector, government, the business community, scientific institutions, international donor organizations and social organizations with information on different indicators of the population's living conditions, as well as on available resources for satisfying basic needs.

2. To provide information for the evaluation of the results of different forms of government policy and programs developed with the aim to improve the population's living standard. The survey will enable the analysis of the relations between and among different aspects of living standards (housing, consumption, education, health, labor) at a given time, as well as within a household.

3. To provide key contributions for development of government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, based on analyzed data.

The Department for International Development, UK (DFID) contributed funding to the LSMS and provided funding for a further three years of data collection for a panel survey, known as the Household Survey Panel Series (HSPS) – and more popularly known as Living in BiH (LiBiH). Birks Sinclair & Associates Ltd. in cooperation with the Independent Bureau for Humanitarian Issues (IBHI) were responsible for the management of the HSPS with technical advice and support provided by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), University of Essex, UK.

The panel survey provides longitudinal data through re-interviewing approximately half the LSMS respondents for three years following the LSMS, in the autumns of 2002 and 2003 and the winter of 2004. The LSMS constitutes Wave 1 of the panel survey so there are four years of panel data available for analysis. For the purposes of this documentation we are using the following convention to describe the different rounds of the panel survey: - Wave 1 LSMS conducted in 2001 forms the baseline survey for the panel - Wave 2 Second interview of 50% of LSMS respondents in Autumn/Winter 2002 - Wave 3 Third interview with sub-sample respondents in Autumn/Winter 2003 - Wave 4 Fourth interview with sub-sample respondents in Winter 2004

The panel data allows the analysis of key transitions and events over this period such as labour market or geographical mobility and observations on the consequent outcomes for the well-being of individuals and households in the survey. The panel data provides information on income and labour market dynamics within FBiH and RS. A key policy area is developing strategies for the reduction of poverty within FBiH and RS. The panel will provide information on the extent to which continuous poverty and movements in an out of poverty are experienced by different types of households and individuals over the four year period. Most importantly, the co-variates associated with moves into and out of poverty and the relative risks of poverty for different people can be assessed. As such, the panel aims to provide data, which will inform the policy debates within BiH at a time of social reform and rapid change.

In order to develop base line (2004) data on poverty, incomes and socio-economic conditions, and to begin to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the BiH MTDS, EPPU commissioned this modified fourth round of the LiBiH Panel Survey.

Geographic coverage

National coverage. Domains: Urban/rural/mixed; Federation; Republic

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The Wave 4 sample comprised of 2882 households interviewed at Wave 3 (1309 in the RS and 1573 in FBiH). As at previous waves, sample households could not be replaced with any other households.

Panel design

Eligibility for inclusion

The household and household membership definitions assume the same standard definitions used at Wave 3. While the sample membership, status and eligibility for interview are as follows: i) All members of households interviewed at Wave 3 have been designated as original sample members (OSMs). OSMs include children within households even if they are too young for interview, i.e. younger than 15 years. ii) Any new members joining a household containing at least one OSM, are eligible for inclusion and are designated as new sample members (NSMs). iii) At each wave, all OSMs and NSMs are eligible for inclusion, apart from those who move outof-scope (see discussion below). iv) All household members aged 15 or over are eligible for interview, including OSMs and NSMs.

Following rules

The panel design provides that sample members who move from their previous wave address must be traced and followed to their new address for interview. In some cases the whole household will move together but in other cases an individual member may move away from their previous wave household and form a new "split-off" household of their own. All sample members, OSMs and NSMs, are followed at each wave and an interview attempted. This method has the benefits of maintaining the maximum number of respondents within the panel and being relatively straightforward to implement in the field.

Definition of 'out-of-scope'

It is important to maintain movers within the sample to maintain sample sizes and reduce attrition and also for substantive research on patterns of geographical mobility and migration. The rules for determining when a respondent is 'out-of-scope' are:

i. Movers out of the country altogether i.e. outside BiH This category of mover is clear. Sample members moving to another country outside BiH will be out-of-scope for that year of the survey and ineligible for interview.

ii. Movers between entities Respondents moving between entities are followed for interview. Personal details of "movers" are passed between the statistical institutes and an interviewer assigned in that entity.

iii. Movers into institutions Although institutional addresses were not included in the original LSMS sample, Wave 4 individuals who have subsequently moved into some institutions are followed. The definitions for which institutions are included are found in the Supervisor Instructions.

iv. Movers into the district of Brcko
Are followed for interview. When coding, Brcko is treated as the entity from which the household moved.

Feed-forward

Details of the address at which respondents were found in the previous wave, together with a listing of household members found in each household at the last wave were fed-forward as the starting point for Wave 4 fieldwork. This "feed-forward" data also includes key variables required for correctly identifying individual sample members and includes the following: - For each household: Household ID (IDD); Full address details and phone number - For each Original Sample Member: Name; Person number (ID); unique personal identifier (LID); Sex; Date of birth

The sample details are held in an Access database and in order to ensure the confidentiality of respondents, personal details, names and addresses are held separately from the survey data collected during fieldwork. The IDD, LID and ID are the key linking variables between the two databases i.e. the name and address database and the survey database.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

Approximately 70% of the questionnaire was based on the Wave 3 questionnaire, carrying forward core measures in order to measure change over time. However in order to develop base line (2004) data on poverty, incomes and socio-economic conditions, and to begin to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the BiHDS the Wave 4 questionnaire additionally contained the Wave 1 Consumption module and a few other LSMS items to allow direct comparability with the Wave 1 data.

Cleaning operations

Dat entry

As at previous waves, CSPro was the chosen data entry software. The CSPro program consists of two main features intended to reduce the number of keying errors and to reduce the editing required following data entry:
- Data entry screens that included all skip patterns. - Range checks for each question (allowing three exceptions for inappropriate, don't know and missing codes).

The Wave 4 data entry program had similar checks to the Wave 3 program - and DE staff were instructed to clear all anomalies with SIG fieldwork members. The program was tested prior to the commencement of data entry. Twelve data entry staff were employed in each Field Office, as all had worked on previous waves training was not undertaken.

Editing

Instructions for editing were provided in the Supervisors Instructions. At Wave 4 supervisors were asked to take more time to edit every questionnaire returned by their interviewers. The SIG Fieldwork Managers examined every Control Form.

Response rate

The level of cases that were unable to be traced is extremely low as are the whole household refusal or non-contact rates. In total, 9128 individuals (including children) were enumerated within the sample households at Wave 4, 5019 individuals in the FBiH and 4109 in the RS. Within in the 2875 eligible households, 7603 individuals aged 15 or over were eligible for interview with 7116 (93.6%) being successfully interviewed. Within co-operating households (where there was at least one interview) the interview rate was

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.

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 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 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.

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 Small Fortunes Survey is the first ever nationally representative survey of the lifestyles and living standards of British children. Taking the child as the unit of analysis, its main aims were :
to establish household expenditure on children and to investigate variation by income, age and gender of child and by family size and status;
to estimate certain of the indirect costs imposed by child rearing;
to determine the nature and extent of extra household support for children;
to specify and compare, the minimum direct costs of children according to budget standard, consensual, self-assessment and behavioural definitions;
to examine the nature and degree of poverty in childhood according to those definitions given above;
to investigate the 'economics of parenting': the extent to which children's aspirations are met at the expense of the living standards of parents; parent/child interactions on finance; parents' economic aspirations for their children;
to explore childhood living standards from children's own perspectives, investigating their experience of money and its management; knowledge and understanding of the family's financial circumstances in the context of the immediate neighbourhood and wider society.

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 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.