£13k needed for "acceptable standard of living"

2 July 2008

A pre-tax income of £13,400 per year is required for each single person in Britain "to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living", according to a report released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The foundation`s study – A Minimum Income Standard for Britain: What People Think – found basic survival should not be the minimum standard of living, in the opinion of the public.

Household budgets should include funds for keeping a home warm and buying "adequate" food, said the report. For a family comprising a couple and two children the minimum was estimated as £26,800.

Co-author Jonathan Bradshaw, Professor of Social Policy at the University of York, commented the Rowntree study differs from standard reports in that it looks at how much income is considered enough for British people themselves.

"Based on these public assessments, almost everyone defined as living below the official poverty line falls short of what people judge to be adequate for their fellow citizens – sometimes by quite a long way," he said.

Last month, Combined Insurance reported a 26 per cent rise in the cost of living in the past two years.

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Gregory Pennington is a member of DEMSA whose code of conduct is approved by the Office of Fair Trading.