I've been pondering and researching about this a lot recently so I'm starting this thread to gather my thoughts on the topic.
Firstly, it's quite hard to find a lot of the information I went looking for.
Take, for instance, if you want to work out how poor the poorest 10% of the UK actually is. How would you go about doing that?
Well, the government publishes incomes by centile, both before and after tax, see here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...-and-after-tax
Handy no? Except it only covers individuals who have some liability to pay income tax, so the lowest centile starts at about £12,000 (I'll have to check the exact amount when I'm on a computer again, can't view the full sheet on my phone). So, this doesn't include people with no income, people with very low incomes, some pensioners, asylum seekers, etc, etc.
Then, how much would you earn if you were working 35 hours a week on minimum wage? It's currently £9.50 per hour (if you're over 23). So if you miraculously had a full-time 35 hour per week job with holiday and sick pay, you'd get £17,290. But even on minimum wage, you get taxed, so your actual take home pay would be £15,364.17.
How much do you need for a decent standard of living in the UK? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has a minimum income standard calculator that allows you to plug in various variables, like how many children you have and how old they are, to see how much you need to earn to cover what the average person thinks is a decent standard of living: https://www.jrf.org.uk/income-benefi...come-standards
For my family, for example, with two adults and two primary school age children, it says that as a household we need to earn £35,824, which you could almost do with two adults working full-time minimum wage jobs.
However, some of the assumptions made in that calculator are a bit questionable. You can click on the button saying show outgoings / income and, for example, it suggests that the household would be spending £93.02 on rent per week. That's £403 per month.
I used to pay £400 rent for a single room in a 4-person house share in Green Lanes in 2008. I looked on Rightmove and the only place I could find where you can rent a 2 bed flat for £400 per month is Middlesbrough. Where I live the cheapest 2 bedroom property within 10 miles costs £795 per month. There is precisely one flat in my town that is on the market for £895 and the next cheapest flats are all over £1,000.
To be continued. I have lots of thoughts in this area. I'm just gathering info at the moment.
Firstly, it's quite hard to find a lot of the information I went looking for.
Take, for instance, if you want to work out how poor the poorest 10% of the UK actually is. How would you go about doing that?
Well, the government publishes incomes by centile, both before and after tax, see here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...-and-after-tax
Handy no? Except it only covers individuals who have some liability to pay income tax, so the lowest centile starts at about £12,000 (I'll have to check the exact amount when I'm on a computer again, can't view the full sheet on my phone). So, this doesn't include people with no income, people with very low incomes, some pensioners, asylum seekers, etc, etc.
Then, how much would you earn if you were working 35 hours a week on minimum wage? It's currently £9.50 per hour (if you're over 23). So if you miraculously had a full-time 35 hour per week job with holiday and sick pay, you'd get £17,290. But even on minimum wage, you get taxed, so your actual take home pay would be £15,364.17.
How much do you need for a decent standard of living in the UK? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has a minimum income standard calculator that allows you to plug in various variables, like how many children you have and how old they are, to see how much you need to earn to cover what the average person thinks is a decent standard of living: https://www.jrf.org.uk/income-benefi...come-standards
For my family, for example, with two adults and two primary school age children, it says that as a household we need to earn £35,824, which you could almost do with two adults working full-time minimum wage jobs.
However, some of the assumptions made in that calculator are a bit questionable. You can click on the button saying show outgoings / income and, for example, it suggests that the household would be spending £93.02 on rent per week. That's £403 per month.
I used to pay £400 rent for a single room in a 4-person house share in Green Lanes in 2008. I looked on Rightmove and the only place I could find where you can rent a 2 bed flat for £400 per month is Middlesbrough. Where I live the cheapest 2 bedroom property within 10 miles costs £795 per month. There is precisely one flat in my town that is on the market for £895 and the next cheapest flats are all over £1,000.
To be continued. I have lots of thoughts in this area. I'm just gathering info at the moment.
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