To think having £211/week each after housing costs isn't poverty?

[PianoThirty]

It is according to the Social Metrics Commission.

They say the poverty line is £203/week for a single parent with one child, £422/week for a couple with two children. All figures are after** housing costs and childcare costs (if applicable).

I'd be over the moon if we had £422/week to spend, and I don't think we're anywhere near poor.

MonkeyToesOfDoom l agree with you 100%. l'm in a similar situation.

Sure.

Considering that jsa/income support/universal credit only pays £135 per week for single parent and 1 child (rent/ctax payed separately) that's more than the government give (though roughly what it would have been were it not for the benefit freeze) something is seriously wrong with someone's maths

The report looks and other things than income which are quite interesting - things like health and how safe where you live is.

whothedaddy don’t forget the internet! Needed to manage universal credits or jobseekers and many children now need access to do homework etc

As someone who spent their entire working life distilling complex information into clear, simple messages, I’d really struggle with that report, it’s as clear as mud. My interpretation is that the figures you quote include housing costs and childcare.

My salary is in the top 5% band and bu this definition I am in poverty, after housing and childcare we have less to live on.

Poverty is having no home, hear or food. We have a generous welfare state in the UK to provide people basics and then some.

Poverty is a bit more complex than this simplistic definition which doesn't take into account all of the factors involved.

There is absolute poverty which means an inability to afford the basic needs of life such as food, housing, clothing, etc. The defining threshold for this is the same the world over and there are people in the UK living in absolute poverty.

Then there is relative poverty, the threshold of which depends on the country. Generally speaking it is when a household earns 60% or less than the current median income. People in relative poverty can more or less afford basics but it's a balancing act and they are very often in a position of social exclusion with a lack of opportunities due to their financial circumstances, this continues the cycle of deprivation and is where we get the phrase "poverty breeds poverty". People in relative poverty can very easily move into a position of absolute poverty.

@Frequency sorry that £190 also includes utilities. By Household bills I mean rent and council tax have already been paid.
Still... gas & electric is £65 a month, water £160 per quarter.

So yeah, £190 a week to cover everything I’ve listed doesn’t suggest poverty to me

The link doesn’t say that though?
In cash terms this means a couple with two children would have an income of less than £211 a week after housing costs

That’s not “each” if that’s the line for poverty I see nothing wrong with it. I’d say £211 for all food, childcare (childcare isn’t mentioned in the link) bills and expenses isn’t flush at all for a family of four

211 a week
minus:
council tax
food shopping
pension contributions (without you 'built up' poverty for later in life)
insurances
union membership
clothes & shoes
phone and wifi
transport/car costs

not much left to live on after that.

Bills like council tax and electricity are not included so £211 has to cover absolutely everything after rent/ mortgage. That's not very much especially if you have a family

That’s really strange.

@Alsohuman - The information isn’t well-presented, but even the Guardian’s summary agrees that the headline figure is after housing costs.

I had a quick look at that report but as it's over 100 pages wrong it was obviously a very quick look. But it seemed like they were using the term 'available resources' to mean what's left after housing, childcare, disability related costs, 'inescapable family related costs' and debt repayments. Although I'm not sure because at the end of the report is mentions 'available resources' but in the first few pages is mentions 'total available resources', and I wasn't sure if they were the same thing, and I couldn't find a glossary of terms.

If it is just after rent payments then it certainly wouldn't go far. But if it is after all those other payments then that's very different.

Yes when I was a single parent I technically came into the ' living in poverty' bracket.

I was just careful where I spent my money and still managed a cheap holiday abroad )

And no I don't think this is another ' knocking the poor' think it takes away the highlight from people genuinely in poverty, those who are struggling to clothe or feed their family

So my weekly bills are -

Council tax - £46
Electric - £20
Water - £5
Transport (to get to work) - £75
Internet/phone - £12
Life insurance - £5
Home insurance - £8

So that’s £171 -

So yes I’d consider £40 a week to cover food, clothes, replacing household stuff, everything else to be very much in poverty.

@AngrySquid - It’s after housing costs and after childcare. At the risk of repeating myself, page 99 in the report states £422/week for a couple with two children; or £203/week for a lone parent with one child. Page 14 explains that the figures are after rent/mortgage and childcare.

It looks like they’ve made a basic error in the report: a household with two adults and two children shouldn’t cost more than twice as much to run as a lone parent household with one child.

We’re all reading the same thing and concluding it means something different so it would be really helpful if the authors of the report had helped us out a bit!

@Oldraver - Yes exactly! By claiming that almost a quarter of the country is in poverty, we roll our eyes and say “oh not this nonsense again”, and lose focus on the 5% or so who are suffering in real poverty.

I've just run the figures for my family. Our essential spending (food and bills) is £12,600 and the poverty line (2 parents 1 child) is £16,300. (Full Sky package included in bills!)

The spare £4000 would have to cover clothes, I couldn't include them in essential spending as didn't have data. It would also have cover furniture and appliances, in my data those are mixed in with housing costs which are supposed to be excluded. (I'm not sure if gas boiler repairs count as housing costs, they would have to come out of the £4000 as well, if not. )

I think 16K after housing is pretty comfortable, going without the other things we spend money on wouldn't bother me that much. (Holidays would be the biggest loss.)
The biggest categories of spending I excluded as non-essential were car, holidays and tutoring. (Car is a completely unnecessary luxury for us.)

I have £98 a week before housing costs, bills, phone credit and food. After, there's nothing.

We've had this before. It's after housing costs incl council tax but not other bills like utilities and broadband, and childcare.

Obviously it's a 'less than' figure, so people with only slightly less than the figure are grouped in with those significantly below it.

And like a PP points out, a high earning couple with a big mortgage or high rent and big childcare bills, could be in poverty according to this definition.

But if a couple with say, £420 pw for food, bills, savings for broken washing machines etc and any luxuries can't manage, then it's more of a budgeting issue than them not having enough money, because if they're careful, they will be very far from the 'sitting in a dark damp house eating cold beans' definition that people imagine poverty to be.

Not having money to replace the washing machine because you've spent all your money on takeaways or whatever is not poverty, it's poor budgeting and failure to plan.

My parents are from a LEDC and I was horrified to read that the UN's poverty line figure well exceeds families who are considered wealthy. I've no idea how these figures are calculated.

£400 a week to cover all bills and food and necessities for a family of four? No it’s not a lot.

That’s also not taking into account the areas people live in, the education they receive, their health, mental and physical, opportunities for children and adults to achieve more, lifestyle, things that make people happy.

Poverty isn’t just about money, it affects every single aspect of someone’s life. For you to sit their and bash poor people because look at how much money they have to live on! Is just an insidious side-effect of years of Tory propaganda. You should be able to look and think critically about the whole aspect of people’s lives, not just whether they have 400 quid a week.