One third of UK households live below the minimum income level

According to a research conducted at Loughborough University, it was discovered that around one third of the UK households are living below the minimum income level. These are the households which lack basic facilities like normal food, clothing and housing. The ratio of the number of people lacking such basic facilities has climbed up from being one fourth at the beginning of the financial year.

Statistics recorded in the research show that the number of people living below the minimum income level was 15 million in 2008-09 and climbed up to 19m in 2014-15. According to the data, a big chunk of this group consisted of lone parents and their children who were not able to have the funds for essential goods and services. While 68% of children of lone parents faced these hardships as of 2008-09, the ratio reduced to three-fourth of them being the victims of living below the minimum income level.

Another contrasting fact discovered is that pensioners are less likely to face the income crunch than the working class of people. According to the data of 2014-15, only 15% of pensioners lived below the minimum standard as opposed to 30% of the working adults. The research does not fall in-line with other studies made to measure poverty. One of the studies suggests that poverty rates were not fluctuating between the period of 2008-09 and 2013-14 but fell sharply in the financial year 2014-15.

Experts suggest that the main reason for this is that incomes are not increasing in proportion to costs. The prices of eatables have increased quite rapidly over a couple of years and occupy a big chunk of the household budget. In addition, there was an increase of 25% in food prices between the period of April 2008 and March 2015 which has pushed people further below the minimum standards of living. However, the supermarket war between March 2015 and October 2016 pressed down the food prices by 4%.

The worst part is that the falling value of the pound suggests that things can go down in the coming future. In such circumstances, the only resort to stabilise household bills is to make savings. This can be done by shopping around and choosing cheaper deals for everything that you need. You should cutback the expense to avoid suffering from lower standards of living and manage a decent living. You can also rely on price comparison site to make sure you get the cheapest deals of commodities like Household energy, travel, insurance and daily deals.