IPPR thinktank blames higher rents, rising property prices and childcare costs for relative poverty reaching 17.4%
Working families have come under increasing financial pressure during the last 25 years from soaring property prices, private sector rent hikes and crippling childcare costs, according to the first major analysis of official figures released last month, which shows the UK’s poverty rate among working households last year reached a record high this century.
An increase in relative poverty from 13% in 1996 to 17.4% of working households in the year to March 2020 illustrates the combination of low wage rises and spiralling cost of living faced by a group that Theresa May described when she was prime minister as the “just about managing”.
