Measuring living standards with income and consumption: evidence from the UK

This paper compares consumption and income as measures of households’ living standards using UK data. It presents evidence that income is likely to be under-recorded for households with low resources. It describes the different impressions one gets about trends in the level and inequality of living standards in the UK when using consumption, and when one adds an imputed income from housing, rather than near-cash income. It describes what different impressions one gets about the composition of households with low living standards if these are identified with consumption rather than income.