By Late 2023, UK Household Will Be £2,100 Short – Living Standards Outlook 2023
Demonstrators hold up placards as they take part in a march organized by The People’s Assembly to demand action to tackle the cost-of-living crisis in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 12, 2022.
Inflation in Britain has already set a 40-year record and the general background of economic life in the United Kingdom has been turbulent since 2021, while forecasts are not encouraging.Each British household will be £2,100 short by the end of 2023, according to the Resolution Foundation. The Outlook predicts that the worst of the already two-years-long cost-of-living crisis in the country is yet to come.
"Low-income families have been hit hardest by soaring energy bills and food prices, and are most likely to have seen both their financial circumstances and their health deteriorate," stated Resolution Foundation researcher Lalitha Try.
The Resolution Foundation is an independent British think tank established in 2005. Its stated aim is to ‘improve the living standards’ of low- and middle-income families. According to its latest Living Standards Outlook, the crisis will continue to affect the UK in 2023.A survey of 10,000 Brits revealed the following:11 percent said that they endured hunger because of a lack of money. Before the pandemic, only five percent stated the same;23 percent of respondents can’t afford to replace or repair their large household appliances. Before the pandemic, only 8 percent stated the same;47 percent faced emotional distress in November 2022 compared to 40 percent in October 2021;45 percent of respondents stated they were worried or very worried about their energy bills over the winter months. Yet for bottom-income workers, the number rose to 63 percent;75 percent reported that they had tried to cut corners in November.The authors have also made some economic calculations. According to the presented numbers:Real wages will return to their Q1 2022 level only in 2027;Absolute poverty will continue in the short run. It has risen from 17.2 percent in 2021-22 to 18.3 percent in 2023-24 (additional 800,000 people in poverty);Child poverty in 2027-28 is predicted to be the highest since 1998-99 (170,000 more children in poverty compared to 2021-22).
"To hear that we are only halfway through this Conservative cost-of-living crisis will alarm many families, and again brings home the profound damage this government has done over the years," said Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow chancellor.
The exploding cost-of-living crisis in the United Kingdom began in 2021, when prices for many basic necessities began to rise faster than household incomes, causing real incomes to plummet. Soaring inflation in Britain, the COVID-19 pandemic, and sanctions imposed on Russia over the start of its special military operation in Ukraine are among the reasons for the worsening of the crisis.
