In her speech yesterday, the Chancellor said the question people will be asking themselves at the next election is "are me and my family better off?"
So what is the answer likely to be? 🧵
Made my grand return to our inflation data response today after a couple of months of being busy working on our Unsung Britain book - here's the thread from James with everything you need to know!
Unsung Britain has faced crushing costs in recent years.
@lalithatry.bsky.social explains why inflation has not been experienced evenly across the income distribution 👇
Massive thanks to all the @resolutionfoundation.org team for contributing to this in some form, and a particular shout out to my co-authors @tom-clark.bsky.social and @mikebrewerecon.bsky.social !
Poorer families really have been unsung over the last 30 years, so we look at what's happened to their incomes, work, benefits, tax, housing, costs, debt, savings, health and care, and propose some policies that could help improve their situation.
Today we at @resolutionfoundation.org have published Unsung Britain, a book about the 13 million working-age families in the poorer half of Britain.
Big day tomorrow! Tune in to our conference tomorrow, and check out the book!
Chart showing proportion of household non-housing consumption spent on 'essentials,' for low-to-middle-income families & higher-income families: UK
Chart of the week gives you a sneak peak into 'Unsung Britain' – a new book we're publishing on Tuesday.
It shows that in the six years leading to last autumn, annualised inflation experienced by the poorest families ran at a rate that was 0.7 percentage points faster than for the richest families
🧵 New research on decarbonising UK farms and what it means for living standards.
The good news is decarbonisation should be manageable and won't cost the world - but it'll still be hard, as farming's in a fragile situation. Here's what we found 👇
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
We're almost a week away from the biggest event of the year: The @resolutionfoundation.org Unsung Britain conference, where we'll be telling you all about the book we're launching on the 13 million working-age families across the poorest half of the country. Be there or be 🟦. Sign up here:
Pay cheque: a word multiple people spent 10 minutes working out how to spell in the office the other week
I'd been waiting for this day for years and now it's finally arrived!
The Government’s Child Poverty Strategy published today is the first we’ve seen for 11 years – which in itself is a sea change. 🧵 👇
Quote graphic Lindsay Judge, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation said: The Government deserve credit for beginning to turn the tide on child poverty and getting rates falling for first time in nine years (outside of the pandemic). This Strategy should be celebrated for setting out a plan to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty over the course of the Parliament. We have long-called for the abolition of the two-child limit which unfairly penalises larger families, the vast majority of whom are in work, have very young children, or disabilities in the family. Repealing it is the right decision, and the Government should be praised for doing so despite fiscal constraints. But other child poverty headwinds remain, not least the continued freeze in Local Housing Allowance which risks further squeezing the living standards of poorer families living in the private rented sector.
The Government's Child Poverty Strategy begins to turn the tide on child poverty.
As a result, child poverty rates will fall next year – the first time in nine years (outside the pandemic).
But other child poverty headwinds remain.
Read our full statement 👇
buff.ly/Tnqasir
In case you missed it, modifying the two-child limit won't reduce poverty by the end of the parliament, but scrapping it will. The first thing any meaningful child poverty strategy needs to do is scrap the two-child limit.
New @resfoundation.bsky.social analysis: Any of the rumoured half-measure options for repealing the two-child limit would leave child poverty HIGHER at the end of the Parliament than it was when the Government took power. 🧵https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/no-half-measures/
Real incomes for lower-income households have likely fallen this year, but a 6.2% rise in UC standard allowances next April should contribute to better news in 2026-27
You can find the whole spotlight here: www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
Uprating is also essential to help families keep up with ever-increasing costs: the overall price level has risen by 25 per cent since July 2021, while food prices have risen by 38 per cent and energy has risen by 55 per cent.
The increase in UC is desperately needed: the value of the UC standard allowance fell by 10 per cent in real-terms between 2012-13 and 2025-26; the April 2026 increase of 6.2 per cent will undo just two-fifths of that fall (40 per cent).
But not all the benefit system will rise with inflation. LHA rates are frozen as default. The UC health element for new recipients will be halved from 2026-27; for existing recipients, it will rise by 1.5 per cent, so that the sum of UC standard allowance and UC health rise by inflation.
In fact, Universal Credit is due to rise by more than inflation in April 2026, part of the Government’s plans to rebalance social security spending away from health-related benefits. As a result, the UC standard allowance will rise by 6.2 per cent in April 2026.
September’s inflation data shows the annual rate of CPI inflation was 3.8 per cent, the same rate it was in August 2025, but over twice its September 2024 level. This grim news came with a silver lining as September inflation is usually used to uprate most benefits the following April.
New spotlight from me covering what the latest inflation data means for benefit uprating out now. Here’s a quick summary:
Today’s data show that a weakening jobs market is feeding through into pay. Depressing stat of the day: real weekly wages have increased by just £1.50 since Sep 2024. Here is our thread (from me and @hannahslaughter.bsky.social).
Very encouraging to read that the Government is preparing to lift the two-child limit as part of its child poverty strategy, but it is disheartening that options short of scrapping it entirely are still being considered. Thread on why this would be the wrong choice for an ambitious strategy:
Chart showing - Number of young people who are NEET, by age and benefit receipt: UK, 2025
Good news that the Govt will offer more support to young people who are out of work.
But while there are almost a million NEET young people, the support announced today (focusing just on 18-21-year-olds who are long-term unemployed and claiming UC) will reach less than 5% of this group...
Amid reports that MPs and an advisory taskforce will recommend scrapping the two-child limit on benefits, it's worth noting that this step would be the most targeted and cost-effective way for the Government to meet its aim of reducing child poverty ⤵️
We wrote more about the rising cost of essentials, and how to help people cope with them here www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
Because poorer households were spending a higher proportion of their income on things like food and energy that saw larger price rises, they also faced higher rates of inflation than higher-income households did during the cost of living crisis.
