Households living below a Minimum Income Standard: 2008–2024

The Minimum Income Standard (MIS) sets out what the public agrees is needed to live with dignity in the UK today. This report gives an estimate of the proportion of people who are living below this level, and those with incomes below 75% of MIS. Those living below 75% of MIS face a far greater likelihood of material deprivation than those whose incomes are above MIS.

The report this year looks at the period between 2008/09 and 2023/24, the most recent year for which data is available. In 2023/24, there was an increase in the proportion of individuals living in households below MIS compared to 2022/23. The number and the proportion of all individuals below MIS is higher than it was in 2008/09.

Key messages

• The proportion of individuals living below MIS has reached its highest level since the start of the data (2008/09), at 37.5%.
• For the first time since this series began, the majority of UK children (52.6%) are living below the MIS.
• Children of lone parents continue to fare much worse than those with couple parents. In 2023/24, 84.2% of children in lone-parent families were growing up in households with inadequate incomes compared to 42.7% in couple-parent families.
• There has been a reduction in the risk of young working-age adults (16- to 24-year-olds) living with insufficient resources; nevertheless, almost 1 in 2 young adults of working age remain at risk of living on an inadequate income.
• Pensioners continue to experience a much lower risk of living on an income that is insufficient to live with dignity than the wider population. There was also a decrease in the proportion of single pensioners living below MIS in 2023/24.
• Among working-age households, in-work income inadequacy continues to rise, and the majority of households below MIS are those where at least one person is in work. Lone parents are especially vulnerable, with more than half of these households (59.5%) having an income below MIS even if they are working full-time.

The following tables show the number of individuals in households across various groups living below MIS, and as a proportion of the total population.

Note: Numbers may not sum to totals due to rounding.

The latest report in the Households Below a Minimum Income Standard series sets out what happened to the adequacy of incomes relative to this publicly determined benchmark in 2023/24. This was the period immediately prior to the change in government and consequently provides a ‘baseline’ against which commitments and policy changes over the coming years can be assessed.

As has been the case for much of the past decade, the data on living standards continues to paint a bleak picture. In their latest Food Insecurity Tracker, the Food Foundation (2025) reported that 11.3% of households (around 6 million adults) experienced food insecurity in June 2025. Between April 2024 and March 2025, Trussell provided 2.9 million emergency food parcels, and while this is a reduction on the number provided in the previous year, it is still 51% higher than in 2019/20 (Trussell, 2025a).

The British Social Attitudes Survey (Curtice et al., 2025) reported that 26% of people felt they were struggling on their household income in 2024, compared with 17% in 2010. Looking back over the past 2 decades of living standards, the Resolution Foundation (Curtice, 2025: 1) notes that ‘the very poorest, private renters, and children have had a particularly tough time’ since the mid-2010s, a view that is broadly supported by our latest analysis.

Our report this year points to the substantial task facing the Government. Over 25 million people (25.3 million) in the UK were living below MIS in 2023/24. Nearly 9 million more people are living in households with inadequate income in 2023/24 compared with 2008/09. In 2023/24, more than 5 million more people were living on incomes below 75% of MIS than in 2008/09, meaning that they are at far greater risk of being materially deprived.

More than half of all children (52.6%) in 2023/24 are growing up in households that lack the income required to meet material needs and to enable participation in society. Well over half of individuals living in private rented accommodation (59.4%) were below MIS in 2023/24, and this proportion has increased substantially (15.9 percentage points) since 2019/20. More than half of all households below MIS in 2023/24 (51.5%) were those in which all adults are employed, a marked increase from just over a third of households in 2008/09 (36.3%).

These findings both point to a ‘general living standards challenge’ facing government and highlight the specific groups who are seeing their risk of inadequate income increasing. In this context, a commitment to raising living standards for all must not only address the overall increase in the proportion of individuals living below MIS as a consequence of cost-of-living pressures and stagnating incomes but also acknowledge that inequalities persist between certain subgroups of the population.

The recent scrapping of the two-child limit, which restricted eligibility for support in Universal Credit for third and subsequent children born after April 2017, will undoubtedly go some way to improving the living standards for children in the UK. However, many other policy decisions have resulted in these high levels of income inadequacy and threaten to diminish the gains from this high-profile policy decision.

The benefit cap remains in place, Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is frozen until at least 2026 — if not until the end of this parliament — creating a growing gap between support and rents, and the freeze in benefits for several years in the 2010s amounted to real-terms cuts that have not been clawed back. Policy decisions matter, and we will continue to track the impact of these decisions on income adequacy relative to MIS and therefore the extent to which the promise of improved living standards is delivered in the coming years.

Key points

• Since our last report, there has been a further increase in the number and proportion of all individuals living below MIS to 25.3 million people — more than 1 in 3 of the population (37.5%).
• As we saw in our previous years’ analyses, children are more likely than either working-age adults or pensioners to be living below MIS. In 2023/24, the majority of UK children (52.6%) were living below the MIS — that is 7.7 million children unable to fully participate in society.
• Meanwhile, working-age adults saw their risk of being below MIS increase to the highest level since we began analysing this data in 2008/09: 36.3%. This is equivalent to 14.9 million individuals, or 0.7 million more people than in our analysis for 2022/23.
• Pensioners experienced a small decline in their risk of living below MIS, down to 22.9%, with absolute numbers of people remaining approximately static at 2.8 million.
• There are contrasts across demographic groups for those living below 75% of MIS. The numbers and proportion of children show an increase in the risk of living below 75% of MIS, whereas those of working or pension age show small reductions in their risk of being below 75% of MIS, with overall numbers remaining stable.

This section outlines how the risk of having an income below what is needed for a minimum socially acceptable standard of living has changed over time. It examines the adequacy of incomes for all individuals in the UK and looks at what has happened for 3 key subgroups — children, working-age adults and pensioners — between 2008/09 and 2023/24. Section 3 provides a more detailed exploration of how household characteristics relate to income adequacy over the same period.

Figure 1 shows there was a further increase in the overall proportion of individuals below MIS to 37.5% in 2023/24. This is the highest level since this series began in 2008/09. Several factors have contributed to this situation.

First, while there was a decline in the rate of inflation following the peak of 2023, the residual effect of rapidly rising costs remained. The increasing cost of essentials eased in the year to March 2024, with inflation on food falling from its peak of 19.1% in March 2023 to 4.0% in March 2024. However, the cumulative impact of previous price rises remained embedded in household bills (ONS, 2025a). As a result, many continued to find it challenging to afford essentials such as food and utility bills. In March 2024, 48% of adults said they had experienced an increase in the cost of living in the previous month. Of these, 93% reported an increase in the cost of their food shopping and 66% saw their gas and electricity bills rise (ONS, 2024a).

Second, incomes increased, but not sufficiently to lift people above MIS. For those in work, median weekly earnings for full-time employees were £728 in April 2024, a 6.0% increase on the year in nominal terms and a 2.9% increase in real terms (ONS, 2024b). However, this is set against a background of real-terms pay cuts of 3% for the financial year ending 2023 (ONS, 2023a). Pay gains were therefore lagging behind inflation.

The state pension increased by 8.5% in April 2024 due to the triple lock, which linked it to inflation for the previous September, whereas other benefits rose by 6.7% (Harker and Kirk-Wade, 2023).

Figure 1 also shows the proportion of individuals in the UK who are living in households with incomes below 75% of what is needed for a minimum socially acceptable standard of living. Almost 1 in 4 of the UK population — 15.6 million — are now living on an income of less than 75% of MIS; people living below this threshold have a substantially greater risk of material deprivation (Hirsch et al., 2016).

Even more concerning is that the proportion of people living on less than 50% of MIS has increased further and now sits at 11.4%. This is the highest level since we first conducted this analysis back in 2008/09. This means that increasing numbers of individuals are unable to afford the basics.

Key points

• For the first time since this series began, the majority of children (52.6%) in the UK experienced life on an inadequate income in 2023/24. This means that they were growing up without the resources they needed for a decent standard of living that allowed them to participate in society. This is a continuation of the post-pandemic trend, which shows a marked increase in the proportion of children living below MIS.
• The children of lone parents continued to fare worse than those of couple parents.
• Working-age adults with children were more likely than working-age adults without children to be below a socially acceptable standard of living — 42.8% and 33.0%, respectively. Meanwhile, single, working-age adults without children saw their risk of living on an income below 75% of MIS decrease since our last report, whereas couples without children showed little change. However, childless, single, working-age adults continued to have a higher risk of being below 75% of MIS (28.5%) than those in couples (12.4%).
• For pensioners, there was little change in the overall risk of living on an inadequate income. However, single pensioners showed a reduction in the risk of being below MIS or below 75% of MIS since our last report.
• The age group most at risk of living on an inadequate income remained 16- to-24-year-olds — almost half (49.3%) were below MIS, despite a reduction in 2023/24. In part, this is attributable to lower minimum wage rates for younger workers. However, steps are in progress to rectify this inequity. In April 2024, the minimum wage for 21- and 22-year-olds was equalised with that of older workers. In 2024, those under 21 had higher percentage rises in their minimum wage than those 21 and over, and this trend continued in 2025 (UK Government, 2025).
• Those in rented accommodation, especially social housing tenants, continue to be at a higher risk of an inadequate income than owner-occupiers. Since 2020, rises in rental costs and the freeze on LHA have both contributed to reduced net income for renters, resulting in a 13.2 percentage point increase in the risk of being below MIS for private renters and an 11.9 percentage point rise in the proportion of social renters below MIS. In contrast, owner-occupiers experienced more modest increases in their risk of living below MIS — 3.8 percentage points for those who own their home outright and 5.5 percentage points for those who own with a mortgage.
• There are high degrees of regional variation in the proportion of individuals living below MIS, with the West Midlands, North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber exhibiting the highest risk of people having an inadequate income. However, all UK regions and nations have at least 1 in 4 individuals below a socially acceptable standard of living.

In this section, the risk of a household falling below MIS is examined in more detail for the 3 main demographic groups — children, working-age adults and pensioners — with analysis exploring the key characteristics within these groups, including household composition and housing tenure. This section also shows how the likelihood of a household being below MIS varies by country and region of the UK.

Children

Figure 5 illustrates the trends in the proportion of children living below MIS and below 75% of MIS by household type from 2008/09 to 2023/24.

It shows a prolonged period of stability prior to the Covid-19 pandemic for children living below MIS and an improvement in living standards following the initial government cost-of-living support schemes in 2020, which were especially beneficial to the children of single-parent families. Following the gradual removal of these schemes, the post-pandemic period shows a marked increase in the risk of children living below MIS.

Regardless of whether they are from couple- or single-parent families, children continue to be the demographic group most likely to live below MIS. This means that they are growing up without what the public agrees is necessary to participate in society. For the first time since this series began, in 2023/24 the majority of children in the UK (52.6%) experienced life on an inadequate income. In the 6th richest country in the world (World Bank Group, 2025), 7.7 million children are growing up without the resources they need.

Children in single-parent households continue to fare the worst, with 84.2% (2.9 million) living below MIS.

Key points

• Since 2008, workless households have remained at substantially higher risk of having an income below MIS than those where somebody is working.
• Conversely, among all working-age households, the greatest rise in the risk of having an inadequate income has been among those where at least one person is in work.
• Lone parents have been hit particularly hard by in-work income adequacy, with more than half of these households having an income below MIS even if working full-time.
• The trend towards working households making up an increasing proportion of households below MIS continued in 2023/24, with workless households now making up less than a third of households below MIS.

This section presents a more detailed picture of the ways in which the risk of being below MIS varies by employment status within working-age households. Figures 17 and 18 show the percentage of single and couple households without children below MIS according to whether they are fully working, partly working or workless, and how this has changed over time.

In both groups, the highest risk of being below MIS is for households where nobody is in work, at 81.0% and 78.5% for singles and couples, respectively. This reflects the continued inadequacy of out-of-work benefits, which leave households far short of what they need to reach MIS. In 2025, out-of-work benefits left working-age adults without children with only around a quarter of what they would need to spend for a minimum standard of living (Stone and Padley, 2025).

As in many of the reports in this series, it is difficult to find much reason for optimism in the key findings presented here. The analysis in this year’s report shows that the effects of high inflation are still being felt, despite falls in the headline rate of CPI in recent years. This is particularly the case for low-middle income households, where essentials — food, household bills, clothing, transport and childcare — take up a greater proportion of disposable income than for households higher up the income distribution.

In 2022/23, spending on these essentials accounted for 51% of non-housing outlays for the bottom fifth of the distribution (Pittaway and Try, 2025), but only 39% for the top fifth. Over the second half of this decade, the outlook for real incomes in lower-income households looks grim, with the freeze in LHA set against rising private rents, large increases in council tax and the continuing general upward trend in energy prices all continuing to pressurise already stretched incomes (Corlett, 2025).

With this outlook in mind, the avowed aim to raise living standards across the population by the end of this decade (Labour Party, 2024: 13), while commendable, is a substantial task. Our analysis this year, updating the series to the year prior to the change in government, shows that the proportion of individuals living in households with incomes below MIS increased again in 2023/24, to its highest level in the period covered.

There are now more than 25 million people (37.5% of all individuals) in the UK living in households without the income they need to meet their minimum needs and participate in society — this is an increase of nearly 9 million since 2008/09. Of real concern is the finding that in 2023/24 over half of all children (52.6%) are growing up in households lacking the income needed to live with dignity — nearly 1 in 6 (16.8%) are living in households with incomes below 50% of MIS, where the material consequences of low incomes will greatly affect their experience of the world and their future life chances.

This situation must not become normalised. Policy decisions have contributed to getting us to this point, and it is imperative that policy decisions play a key role in reversing this trend. The recent announcement to remove the two-child limit is very welcome, but in and of itself, this will not solve the problem. Much more needs to be done to address the ongoing challenges posed by, for example, the cost and availability of suitable housing, and the high cost of domestic energy. Over the coming years, we will begin to see evidence as to whether or not the commitment to improving living standards is resulting in material differences in people’s lives.

How MIS measures the income required for an acceptable standard of living

MIS is the income that people need for a minimum socially acceptable standard of living in the UK today, based on what members of the public think. It is calculated by specifying baskets of goods and services required by different types of households in order to meet these needs, and to participate in society. The research entails a sequence of detailed deliberations by groups of members of the public, informed by expert input where this is necessary. The groups work to the following definition:

A minimum standard of living in the UK today includes, but is more than just, food, clothes and shelter. It is about having what you need in order to have the opportunities and choices necessary to participate in society.

MIS distinguishes between the needs of different household types. It directly considers the needs of working-age households with and without children (that is, households that comprise a single adult or a couple, with or without dependent children), and the needs of single and couple pensioner households. However, for the purposes of estimating the total number of people below MIS in the population, a set of assumptions about the income requirements of other households has been devised, using the MIS results as a starting point (Hirsch et al., 2016).

The analysis of numbers below MIS also uses rolling averages of annually adjusted income benchmarks, after housing and childcare costs, to compare with income data from the Family Resources Survey. This helps ensure that changes in minimum requirements identified when the research is refreshed or reviewed for each household type every 2 years are introduced gradually, avoiding artificially reporting a sudden change.

By measuring incomes after housing and childcare costs, this analysis avoids making prior assumptions about these costs, which in practice can be highly variable. One aspect of housing costs that it does not fully capture, however, is home maintenance: the MIS model bases this on what the public thinks that tenants would need to spend as a minimum, while for homeowners it takes mortgage payments into account, but not the cost of maintaining one’s own home.

The MIS research is funded and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University. It has produced annual updates since 2008. MIS was originally developed in partnership with the Family Budget Unit at the University of York, bringing together expert-based and ‘consensual’ methods (based on what members of the public think).

You can find further information and publications related to MIS here.

The figures in this report

• The numbers and percentages included in this report are calculated using the population weights provided by DWP as part of the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data series. These weights are designed to produce sample estimates grossed up to apply to the whole population, accounting for differences in response rates among different types of households.
• Percentages in this report are rounded to the nearest 0.1%.
• Some of the figures presented in this report for past years differ slightly from previously published data, due to some technical improvements in the calculation of household income and grossing factors in the HBAI data, and in how results for the survey sample are translated into estimates of how many people in certain groups have incomes below MIS.
• More information on the processes used to calculate the grossing factors can be found in the HBAI Quality and Methodology Information Report.

Categorising individuals within the analysis of income adequacy

In the analysis of the Family Resources Survey and MIS data presented here, individuals are categorised according to the following definitions.

Children are individuals aged under 16, or aged 16 to 19 years old, and they are:

• not married, nor in a civil partnership, nor living with a partner
• living with parents/a responsible adult
• in full-time, non-advanced education, or in unwaged government training.

Pensioners are defined as all those adults above state pension age. All other individuals are defined as working-age adults.

Figures A1 to A4 show the 2 MIS indicators and compare these to the relative income indicator of poverty between 2008/09 and 2023/24. This shows that the increase in the proportion of people below MIS standards is not reflected in relative income poverty. This is because relative poverty measures are less sensitive than MIS to rising costs, which are captured by the rebasing of MIS budgets.

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World Bank Group (2025) GDP (current US$)

Dr Elaine Robinson is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP), where she conducts quantitative analysis of income adequacy. Her research interests include fuel poverty and housing policy.

Dr Juliet Stone is Research Fellow at CRSP, where she focuses on quantitative analysis of income adequacy. She leads work on local child poverty indicators and poverty at the end of life.

Professor Matt Padley is Co-Director of CRSP, where he leads on data analysis and the application and development of MIS in London, the UK and globally. Matt has pioneered and leads research on Retirement Living Standards.

If you are using this document in your own writing, our preferred citation is:

Robinson, E. Stone, J. and Padley, M. (2026) Households living below a Minimum Income Standard: 2008–2024. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.