Don't take this new estimate of poverty all that seriously

A new report out insisting that poverty has climbed over the past few decades. Not a report to take all that seriously really:

The number of British households falling below minimum living standards has more than doubled in the past 30 years, despite the size of the economy increasing twofold, a study on poverty and deprivation in the UK claims . According to the study, 33% of households endure below-par living standards – defined as going without three or more "basic necessities of life", such as being able to adequately feed and clothe themselves and their children, and to heat and insure their homes. In the early 1980s, the comparable figure was 14%.

The actual research itself isn't quite as bad as the write up of it (although that's last year's version, this year's is not published as yet). Not as bad as long as we recall the limitations to it.

The number of people falling below the minimum standards of the day has doubled since 1983

The important part is that "standards of the day".

It's a good measure of poverty for all that. Very similar to the way the Rowntree people calculate the Living Wage and we at the ASI have several times insisted that we support that method of measurement. It's Adam Smith's linen shirt all over again. Not being able to afford a linen shirt does not make you poor. But if you live in a society where not having enough to be able to afford a linen shirt means you are regarded as poor then in that society you are indeed poor. Thus the Rowntree surveys of what people ought to be able to do without being regarded as poor in this society.

But that makes this a survey of relative poverty, not absolute. For as society becomes generally richer then the list of things you should be able to do without being regarded as poor expands. For example:

Specifically, one in three people could not afford to adequately heat their homes last winter and 29% had to turn the heating down or off or only heat part of their homes.

I very much doubt that anyone at all expected to be able to heat all of their house the entire winter back in 1980. Perhaps the very richest: but partial heating of a house was entirely the norm even in a thoroughly middle class upbringing like my own. Yes, the report does talk about this but the standard of "fully heated" has changed markedly over these decades.

The interesting way to read this report is actually to look at the advances that have been made. The general standard of living has risen sufficiently that what used to be considered being reasonably well to do is now regarded as being in poverty. At which point three cheers for free market capitalism: the only socio-economic system that has ever actually managed this feat.