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<p>The Institute for Fiscal Studies published “Living Standards, poverty and inequality
in the UK: 2019” on 19 June which acknowledged that the rise of in-work relative poverty
is a complex issue with no easy answer. They cited a number of reasons, including
that there are more people in work overall and far fewer workless households, for
example, there are 667,000 fewer children in workless households compared with 2010.
Furthermore, far fewer pensioners are poor than ever before, primarily driven by increased
government spending on pension benefits. This has raised the relative poverty line
resulting in more ‘in work’ households falling below the line in recent years than
they would have done without these increases in pensioner incomes.</p><p>The IFS estimated
that the remaining third of the increase is due to two main factors: that earnings
have risen less quickly towards the bottom of the distribution than the top and that
housing costs have risen faster for poorer households than richer ones.</p><p>We know
that there is more to do to support working people. The Chancellor has set out the
Government’s ambition to end low pay across the UK. The National Living Wage, rose
to £8.21 an hour in April 2019 and is expected to benefit over 1.7m people. The government
is working to ease issues around high housing costs by delivering over 1.3 million
extra homes in England since 2010. The Government is now on track to raise housing
supply to 300,000 per year on average by the mid-2020s. Over £44 billion of new financial
support will be available for housing over the next five years.</p>
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