Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK ; 2016/2017 to 2021/2022

Debates over living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK are often hampered by the fact that official data on household incomes are available only with a significant lag. Currently, the latest statistics are for 2014-15. In this report, we attempt to fill this gap by estimating what has happened to household incomes between 2014-15 and 2016-17 based on other data sources and changes to direct tax and benefit policy. We then estimate how the incomes of different households would evolve up to 2021-22 if current tax and benefit policy plans are kept to and if the macroeconomic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) - for things such as earnings and employment - were correct. We also consider macroeconomic scenarios that are more and less optimistic than the OBR's central forecast.