Over the past ten years, median household income has risen by about 28%, while the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) shows inflation running at 25%. So while living standards have stagnated, they at least appear to be up a bit on their pre-recession level. Such statistics give us a broad picture of how households are doing […]
The past five years have seen ups and downs for wage earners, in terms of average pay keeping up with inflation. After dipping in the recession, real pay started to rise again in 2014. The main beneficiaries were private sector workers, although when inflation hit zero even those affected by the 1% public sector pay […]
Both the tone and content of Philip Hammond’s first budgetary statement belied the mood music of the past few weeks: that Theresa May’s government will do much more to help just about managing families – dubbed the “JAMs”. It continued in a modest way some policies of its predecessor: freezing fuel duty; promising more social […]
Zero inflation is great news these days for low income families. This is because more and more government policies affecting income are being set without regard to the inflation rate. If you work on the minimum wage, you can expect your pay to rise 23 per cent and tax allowance 18 per cent by 2020 […]
We pay taxes for the NHS in case we need healthcare – why should welfare be any different? In its search for justifications for saving money on welfare, the government has placed much emphasis on limiting out-of-work benefits in order to avoid perverse incentives. But cutting the welfare cap only produces around 1 per cent […]
Low inflation is better news than it used to be for people on low incomes Today’s record-equalling increase of half a per cent in the Consumer Prices Index is short-term good news for the great majority of people in the UK, who have seen prices rising faster than their incomes in recent years. It increases […]