It’s not getting better: survey finds falling living standards

Issued: Thu, 02 May 2013 12:18:00 BST

‌Initial results from a groundbreaking study have highlighted a number of ways in which people’s experience of life is not meeting what they would consider to be a minimum standard of living in the UK.

The Poverty & Social Exclusion report is the largest and most authoritative study of poverty and deprivation ever conducted in the UK. The headline results for Scotland found that:

• more than 1 in 5 people suffer from a damp, inadequately heated or poorly-decorated home
• almost 1 in 20 people are unable to afford an adequate diet
• a total of 1 in 14 adults cannot afford some basic items of clothing
• overall, almost 1 in 3 adults suffer from at least one form of financial insecurity: unable to afford household insurance, save £20 a month for rainy days, or afford to make regular payments into a pension scheme, for example.

The research was a major collaboration between eight partners including representatives from the University of Glasgow. More than 14,000 people across the UK were surveyed. The results are unique because it is the only study that compares what the majority agrees are necessities of life in the UK today with people’s actual living standards, rather than examining income.

Commenting on the results, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies Nick Bailey said: ‘These findings paint a bleak picture for many people living in low-income households in Scotland today. There is little comfort in the fact that levels of deprivation appear to be even worse in the rest of the UK.’

www.poverty.ac.uk