The goal of the Oxfam Humankind Index for Scotland is to assess Scotland’s prosperity through a holistic and more representative measure of progress, beyond the dominant economic model which relies on Gross Domestic Product as the main indicator. The Oxfam Humankind Index measures the real wealth of Scotland – what really matters to the people of Scotland.
In April 2011, Resolution Foundation started following seven low to middle income families across England to track their financial and economic position and how their lives changed over the course of 12 months. This report summarises their experiences over the year and the key challenges faced by the families.
In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Survey, this paper confirms the standard negative effects of comparison income on life satisfaction with all age groups, and many controls.
Paper that identifies new evidence that, because of a new inflation environment, hard times started significantly earlier for households on lower incomes than for the average UK household. Because the costs of essential goods and services have been rising much faster than standard rates of inflation for some time, households on modest incomes have fared far worse than official data suggests. More and more are struggling to achieve a minimum standard of living.
The report is structured in three sections. Section 1 sets out data on long-term trends in UK female employment and on how the UK measures up internationally. Section 2 drills down into the international data to better diagnose the UK’s specific performance issues on female employment with a particular focus on maternal employment. Section 3 describes what countries with better female employment rates do differently from the UK in terms of public spending on family policy. The note concludes by sketching out some general and high-level strategic implications.
Report that presents a summary of the latest information collected from the full wave one of the Life Opportunities Survey (LOS), for which fieldwork was conducted across Great Britain between June 2009 and March 2011.
A report based on the interim results - year one of the first wave of fieldwork - was published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in December 2010. The findings in this report replace the findings presented in the interim report.
Report on differences in age, satisfaction in life and incomes of people in the UK and Germany.
Briefing that identifies workers in Britain today who earn the minimum wage and less than the living wage. It describes the incidence of low wage work by gender, full or part-time employment, region, occupation, industrial sector and level of education. Data in this briefing is taken from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2010 micro data except for the detailed breakdown by education which is taken from the Labour Force Survey 2010.
A 2011 update of the minimum income standard for the United Kingdom, based on what members of the public think people need for an acceptable minimum standard of living.
The report shows:
• What incomes different family types require in 2011 to meet the minimum standard
• How much the cost of a minimum household budget has risen since the last update in 2010.
The government has high-profile child poverty targets which are assessed using a measure of income, as recorded in the Household Below Average Income series (HBAI).
However, income is an imperfect measure of living standards. Previous analysis suggests that some children in households with low income do not have commensurately low living standards.
This report aims to document the extent to which this is true, focusing on whether children in low-income households have different living standards depending on whether their parents are employed, self-employed, or workless.