Shimeon Lee has a topical TPA piece on defects in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “cost of living tracker.”
A closer look at "JRF's cost of living tracker"
Active users of X may have seen a viral clip last week of LBC host Nick Ferrari pushing back on the claim that 7 million households supposedly cannot afford a 50p toothbrush. The figure comes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “cost of living tracker” which claims that 7.4 million low income families are going without essentials in 2026.
This has been uncritically repeated by outlets like the BBC who featured a 77 year old woman claiming she cannot even afford to turn on her oven - more dramatic than anything actually measured in the JRF survey. The same woman has appeared in many similar articles before, making outlandish claims like only having seven hot meals a year. Stories and reports like these are used to build the case for ever more government spending, with the JRF calling for the universal credit standard allowance to rise by as much as 68 per cent, for example.
Yet there is reason to be sceptical. In the BBC article, the same woman who cannot afford to use her oven reported spending £50 a week on petrol - enough to drive 300 miles. Exactly why a pensioner is driving the equivalent of London to Newcastle every week is unclear, especially considering she couldn’t afford a car in 2024.
No surprises but the whole piece is well worth reading.
Ultimately, the problem with measuring hardship in this way is that going without some things does not necessarily mean lacking the money for it. People make different choices about how to allocate their resources. In the same 2023 JRF survey, 15 per cent of those who were “going without essentials” also said they did not intend to reduce socialising due to cost, with 15 per cent also economically inactive. More welfare should not be the default answer, and when extraordinary claims and common sense contradict, common sense should prevail.
5 comments:
Jeff Bezos - you must know the chap, looks like a circumcised penis - says that in his experience when "the data" and anecdotes disagree, it's the anecdotes that are right.
I suppose that the equivalent of saying that someone who spends £50 a week on petrol isn't poor.
If you are a charity then everybody you encounter is an opportunity for you to do your Lady Bountiful* act. Especially when you call for other people to bear the cost.
* From AI: Lady Bountiful refers to a wealthy, upper-class woman who engages in charity, often with a connotation of ostentatiousness or patronizing behaviour. The term is frequently used disapprovingly to describe a woman who uses her generosity to display her superior social status or to impress others, rather than out of genuine humility.
dearieme - in this case Jeff Bezos probably has a point, the anecdotes are so numerous. Even at a personal level, Mrs H and I know of too many claimants who exaggerate their situation to claim benefits. Borderline fraud cases would be a generous description.
DJ - yes, the Lady Bountiful act always had its attractions and still does. Andy "Bountiful" Burnham isn't doing much else at the moment. With our money of course - or whatever he can still squeeze out of us.
Nancy Astor was often accused of overdoing the condescending Lady Bountiful act; I’ve always liked the story that, when she suggested to an audience of unemployed workers in the East End that they could create a nourishing meal from boiling up fish heads, she was heckled with a cry of “Who ate the fish?"
Burnham’s recent patronising reference to ‘the good people of Piddington’ suggests he too is aiming for a blend of affability and condescension; there is something distinctly repellent about the whole ethos of his Cabinet setting themselves up as the nation’s superior benefactors, deciding how best to allocate our resources to those they perceive to be most deserving - Comrades Bountiful, perhaps.
Macheath - ha ha, yes, Comrades Bountiful is the updated version. It's a curiously accurate comparison, Zohran Mamdani is trying to do something similar in New York, different approach but a Comrade Bountiful sentiment.
"there is something distinctly repellent about the whole ethos of his Cabinet"
I agree and oddly enough it doesn't help when blogging about them because they are repellent and the tactics they use are so disgusting that simple ridicule often seems to be all that is available.
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