News
Current news articles
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Families falling further away from meeting minimum acceptable standards of living
Ahead of the PM’s promised ‘reset’, including a focus on improved living standards, Child Poverty Action Group’s cost of a child calculations show that for the first time since the research started in 2008, all family types on low and modest incomes are unable to meet their costs or reach what the public deems a minimum acceptable living standard.
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Families could lose around £80-a-week in child benefit and the child element of Universal Credit (UC) if a young person over 16 starts an apprenticeship instead
Families could lose around £80-a-week in child benefit and the child element of Universal Credit (UC) if a young person over 16 starts an apprenticeship instead of staying in full-time education
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Number of people dying in poverty increases by 19% in four years
New research carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) for end-of-life charity Marie Curie has set out the stark financial reality of dying in the United Kingdom today.
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A Minimum Income Standard for the UK in 2024
The 2024 update of the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) shows that there continues to be a gap between what many low-income households have and what the public agree people in the UK need, not just to survive but to live with dignity.
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New research highlights child poverty as critical election issue
- Two thirds of new constituencies have at least a quarter of children living in poverty - Data shows strong correlation between constituencies with high rates of child poverty and the two-child limit - Coalition of over 120 organisations calls on all political parties to set out their plans on child poverty and to scrap the two-child limit
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How much do students need for an acceptable standard of living?
New research from CRSP, supported by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) with funding from TechnologyOne, calculates a Minimum Income Standard (MIS) for students, highlighting what they need to participate and feel included in University life in the UK.
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Chloe Blackwell joined the Tech Shock podcast from Parent Zone
CRSP researcher, Dr Chloe Blackwell, joined the Tech Shock podcast from Parent Zone to talk about a recent publication, ‘The Minimum Digital Living Standard for Households with Children: Overall Findings Report'.
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CRSP research for RNIB reveals that a quarter of blind and partially sighted people miss out on their disability benefits
New research from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, produced for RNIB, reveals that more than one in four blind and partially sighted people (83,000) miss-out on the disability benefits they’re entitled to.
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How much do you need to earn to reach an acceptable standard of living in the capital?
Our work at CRSP on the Minimum Income Standard for London, explores this question.
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New report reveals unmanageable debts are pushing people below a minimum acceptable living standard
Four out of five people in debt due to household bills have incomes below a minimum acceptable level, according to new analysis carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy.
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Cost of a Child in 2023
High inflation pushed the cost of raising a child to £166,000 for a couple and £220,000 for a lone parent in 2023, but the enduring impact of benefit cuts and ongoing price rises have left many parents unable to give their children what the public says is a minimum acceptable living standard, new research by CRSP shows.
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New research on the additional family costs for meeting the everyday needs of children on the autism spectrum
New research by CRSP, funded by Family Fund, has found that families and carers raising autistic children face extra costs of over £2,605 each year to cover everyday essentials that meet their children’s needs. Parents and carers raising children on the autism spectrum need to spend at least 60% more on items, which need to be of higher, sturdier quality and replaced more regularly, in line with children’s needs.
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Standard inflation measures failing to fully capture cost-of-living pressures for people on lower incomes
New research, carried out by CRSP, provides new evidence that households with lower incomes are facing greater financial pressures than existing inflation measures are capturing. The Decent Living Index (DLI) has been developed by CRSP, with the support of abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.
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A Minimum Income Standard for the UK in 2023
The Minimum Income Standard (MIS) provides a vision of the living standards that we as a society agree everyone in the UK should be able to achieve. This latest update sets out what households need to reach the MIS benchmark in 2023.
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A Minimum Income Standard for London 2022
Our latest research looking at what is needed for a decent living standard in London focuses on working-age adults without children, and pensioners. Groups of working-age adults and pensioners in Inner and Outer London discussed and agreed what these households need in order to have a minimum socially acceptable standard of living in 2022. The research calculated the difference in a minimum household budget between the capital and elsewhere in the UK, and looked at the implications of this difference for the adequacy of social security and wages. Finally, the findings of the research were used to look at the number of households without the income needed to meet this minimum standard in the capital and how this has changed over time.
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Number of children in poverty living in working households on the rise
New analysis by the Centre for Research in Social Policy shows inequalities in child poverty risks
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Understanding the cost of education to households in the UK
New analysis undertaken by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) – for Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) – shows that parents typically need to find at least £39 per week for a child’s secondary school education and £19 for a primary-aged child.
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Annual update of Households Below the Minimum Income Standard: 2008-2021 published
Our latest analysis shows that in 2020-21, just more than 29.1% of individuals in the UK were living in households with incomes below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). This means that 19.2 million people do not have the income required to live with dignity in the UK: they are unable to afford the goods and services the public think you need to meet both material needs and participate in society.
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Living or Surviving? - Benefits, barriers, and opportunities for young people transitioning out of homelessness
New research from CRSP, funded by the West Midlands Combined Authority Homelessness Taskforce and facilitated by St Basils, highlights the impact of low income and the social security system on young peoples’ living standards and their opportunities to transition out of homelessness. The research comprised in depth interviews with 21 young people aged 17 – 25 across the West Midlands who were living in or had moved on from supported housing after experiencing or been at risk of homelessness.
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Rising prices add almost 20% to the minimum cost of retirement
New analysis from the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP), funded by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), shows that what is needed to retire at a minimum living standard has increased over the last year by almost 20% due to high inflation. This substantial increase highlights the need for pension reform to help more people achieve an adequate income in retirement.
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Transformative policy change for families affected by terminal illness could be delivered at a minimal cost to the taxpayer
New research from the Centre for Research in Social Policy, funded by the end of life charity, Marie Curie, shows that giving this group early access to their State Pension could almost halve their rate of poverty across the UK, lifting more than 8,600 dying people out of poverty every year.
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Cost of a child in Scotland 2022 - New report published today
Our new report commissioned by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland has found a widening gap between the cost of raising a child in Scotland and actual family incomes, despite the significant impact of Scottish government policies and lower childcare costs.
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The cost of a child in 2022
A new report produced by CRSP for Child Poverty Action Group has found that even couple parents who are both working full-time on the national living wage can’t reach a minimum, socially acceptable living standard this year.
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A Minimum Income Standard for the UK in 2022
The 2022 update of the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) shows that there is a growing gap between what many families on low incomes have and what the public agree households in the UK need, not just to survive but to live with dignity.
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Fuel poverty measures discussed on Radio 4's More or Less programme
Matt Padley spoke to Tim Harford on Radio 4’s More or Less programme about fuel poverty measures and the lack of consistency in these across the UK
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Minimum London weighting could help households in the capital reach a decent living standard
New research from CRSP shows that the minimum London Weighting needed to cover a basic standard of living in the capital is £6,549. That’s over £2,000 the average minimum London Weighting paid to many key workers. The high costs of housing, childcare and travel in London means it can cost as much as 50% more to achieve a decent standard of living in the capital than the rest of the UK.
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Research by the Centre for Research in Social Policy finds families are facing increases in costs of £400 per month
New analysis from the Centre for Research in Social Policy shows that families with children are paying up to £400 more per month, to meet the cost of basic items such as food, rent and heating. The impacts of inflation are being felt sooner and harder by those on the lowest incomes, who spend a higher proportion of their incomes on essential items.
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Low income families are facing the cost of living crisis without the government support they had in the pandemic
A new report, draws on research, which followed a group of low-income families through Covid and now escalating inflation. Insecure work, low and fluctuating incomes from work and benefits, and managing health and family needs, meant that stability could be hard to find even before Covid.
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New research published today shows that 90,000 people die in poverty in the UK each year.
The report published by end-of-life charity Marie Curie, based on research carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, revealed that the situation is particularly bleak for people of working age who are in the last 12 months of life, with more than 1 in 4 (28%) of this group dying in poverty. This makes those who die at working age more than twice as likely to die in poverty than compared to those who live past pension age. The risk rises steeply for parents with dependent children, with two out of three facing poverty toward the end of their lives if they die before retirement age.
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New research on the living standards of young adults in the West Midlands
Dr Ruth Webber has been awarded funding to carry out new research on the living standards of young adults in the West Midlands, transitioning out of homelessness focusing on the impact of low benefit rates.
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Latest analysis of Households below a Minimum Income Standard published
Nearly half of working-age adults living below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) are in working households, shows a new report from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. The findings highlight that work often fails to lift people out of poverty, in a direct challenge to the DWP’s newly announced ‘Way to Work’ campaign.
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Staying home and getting on
Tackling the challenges facing low to middle income families where young adults live with their parents.
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CRSP study for Scottish Government shows how high costs drive fuel poverty in remote areas
A study using Minimum Income Standards research to identify higher costs in remote parts of Scotland will play a key role in the Scottish Government's plans to tackle fuel poverty.
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Latest MIS study shows low income households need greater support emerging from COVID, as cuts loom
The 2021 update of the Minimum Income Standard shows that if planned cuts to Universal Credit go ahead in October, a single person who has lost their job will have only 33% of what they need to reach MIS, the lowest level yet recorded.
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A Minimum Income Standard for London 2020
The latest report on the Minimum Income Standard for London focuses on households with children, what these households need for a decent standard of living in the capital, and how this compares to elsewhere in the UK.
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Seeking security in an unstable world: low-income families before and during the pandemic - new research published
Two new reports have been published from our qualitative longitudinal research study ‘Bringing up a family: making ends meet’, funded by JRF.
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Households below a Minimum Income Standard - Latest report
The latest report in the Households below a Minimum Income Standard series, looking back over the ten year period from 2008/9 to 2018/19, is published today.