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<p>This Government is committed to broadening our understanding of people’s living
standards. New experimental statistics to measure poverty are being developed, based
on the work undertaken by the Social Metrics Commission (SMC) which was presented
in the SMC’s ‘A New Measure of Poverty’ report last year. This development work includes
consideration of groups of people previously omitted from poverty statistics, like
rough sleepers and those just above the low income threshold but in overcrowded housing,
as well as consideration of a wider measurement framework of poverty covering the
depth, persistence and lived experience of poverty.</p><p>There is no agreed way of
defining destitution. External organisations (most notably the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
(JRF)) have attempted to define and measure destitution. The JRF’s definition of destitution,
however, is complex, and challenging to measure with accuracy. The JRF admit that
there is a wide margin of uncertainty about the numbers they identify as destitute.
The government therefore has no plans to adopt this definition as any official definition
of destitution should be measurable and accurate.</p><p> </p>
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