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Accounting for Housing in Poverty Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

Killan Mullan ,
Holly Sutherland  and
Francesca Zantomio
Killan Mullan
Affiliation:
Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney E-mail: k.mullan@unsw.edu.au
Holly Sutherland
Affiliation:
Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex E-mail: hollys@essex.ac.uk
Francesca Zantomio
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice E-mail: francesca.zantomio@unive.it
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Abstract

The treatment of housing in the definition of income used to measure poverty makes a big difference to who is counted as poor. Both the Before Housing Costs (BHC) and After Housing Costs (AHC) measures in current use in the UK pose problems. BHC income does not capture the advantages of living in owner-occupied housing and AHC income might not account for the benefits of living in higher-quality accommodation. We explore the potential of including in income the difference between the estimated value of housing consumed and housing costs, which we refer to as net imputed rent. We investigate whether findings about child and pensioner poverty, and judgements about the effectiveness of poverty-reducing policies, are affected by accounting for housing in this way.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 471 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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