The low income gap: a new indicator based on a minimum income standard
Donald Hirsch
Matt Padley
Juliet Stone
Laura Valadez
2134/11418000.v1
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_low_income_gap_a_new_indicator_based_on_a_minimum_income_standard/11418000
<p>In many high-income countries,
governments seek to ensure that households at least have sufficient incomes to
afford basic essentials such as food and clothing, but also to help citizens
reach socially acceptable living standards allowing full participation in society.
Their success in doing so is commonly monitored in terms of how many citizens are
below a poverty line set relative to median income, and by how far below it
they fall (the ‘poverty gap’). Yet the threshold below which this gap starts to
be measured is arbitrary, begging the question of what level of low income needs
addressing. A more ambitious measure, presented in this paper, considers the
extent to which people fall short of a benchmark representing a socially agreed
minimum standard. This ‘low income gap’ can be used to represent the distance a
society has to go to eliminate income that is undesirably low. The paper
presents the indicator, its meaning and some recent trends in the United Kingdom,
where the methodology behind the indicator has been pioneered. The results
demonstrate that this empirically derived benchmark has the potential to be of
value in other countries, in assessing whether they are making progress in
reducing low income.</p><br>
2020-01-03 14:51:31
Social Psychology
Poverty
Income
Deprivation
Living standards
Sociology