Research and analysis

Summary: Review of the UK Material Deprivation Measures

Updated 12 April 2024

This report reviews and recommends revisions to the measurement of material deprivation in the UK.

Material deprivation is a direct measure of poverty derived from the lack of items and activities deemed to be necessary for an acceptable standard of living. Lack can be defined in terms of affordability, other barriers (such as disabilities) or simple absence. In order for measures to capture contemporary material deprivation it is important that necessities included in measures are periodically reviewed to ensure they reflect public perceptions of necessities.

Specifically, the aims of the review were to explore:

• which material deprivation items for families with children, families with working-age adults and families with pensioners should be included in the Family Resources Survey (FRS);
• the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches for determining who is materially deprived;
• the advantages and disadvantages of developing a core set of questions for the whole population alongside measures aimed at working-age adults, children and pensioners;
• whether the advantages of updating the material deprivation measures outweigh the disadvantages.

Research context

In December 2021, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commissioned the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political Science to conduct a review of the UK material deprivation measures. This followed a recommendation from the Office for Statistics Regulation to review the current set of questions that underpin UK material deprivation, and to determine a way to compare material deprivation across groups (OSR, 2021).

It is well over a decade since the UK material deprivation measures have been reviewed. The child material deprivation indicator was introduced in 2004/05 and the last time changes were made was 2010/11. The pensioner material deprivation indicator has not been reviewed since it was introduced in 2009/10. A recently introduced material deprivation indicator for working-age adults is based on the adult items in the child indicator, unchanged since 2010/11.

Qualitative research findings and short-listing necessities

In early 2022, focus groups were held to help assess whether, and what, changes were required to the items and activities included in the UK material deprivation measures. Participants were drawn from across the UK, different age groups, income groups, ethnic groups, gender, household types and disability status.

Each focus group was structured around a series of polls covering items and activities selected from a long-list of 103 items informed by an evidence review. Participants were invited to indicate which items they thought were necessities, which people should be able to afford for an acceptable standard of living in the UK today. The poll results were used as a starting point for in-depth discussions. 

Following the focus groups, set criteria were used to select a short-list of items and activities. These were based on data collected in the focus groups, information from secondary data sources on prevalence and support for particular items or activities, the potential impact of variation in tastes, differences in cost and whether an item or activity is likely to be specialist for a particular groups of the population. Finally, the relationship to other short-listed items or activities was considered along with information from the rapid evidence review.  The result was a recommendation to test a short-list of 35 items and activities.

Test questions were included in the FRS during April, May and June 2022. The first set of questions asked respondents to identify necessities from the short-list. A second set asked respondents if they lacked any of the short-listed items.

The FRS test questions included a number of changes to the way in which information on material deprivation is collected. Firstly, one adult member of each household responded to questions on a common set of 13 household-level items. Secondly, a two-step method established whether respondents lacked any of the items or activities before asking why they lack any using a standardised follow-up question. Previously, the two-step method was used for pensioners following recommendations made prior to the pensioner measure being introduced in 2009/10. The changes improve data collection methods, increase comparability between age groups and aid the potential for designing a whole population measure.

Recommended changes to the material deprivation items and case for change

Analysis of the FRS test question data informed a set of recommendations on which items and activities should be included in revised material deprivation measures for working-age adults, children and pensioners.  

Although breaks in series make it difficult to analyse trends, the Covid-19 pandemic had already disrupted the series in recent years and the Review concluded that the benefits of revising the measures outweighed the disadvantages. The main advantages are:

• updating the necessities to items and activities which are perceived to be necessary for a minimum acceptable standard of living in the UK today;
• standardisation in data collection methodology;
• a core set of household-level items reduces the survey burden relative to collecting this information from multiple adults living in the same household, increases comparability between age groups and, potentially, aids the development of a whole population measure.

Recommendations for revisions to the material deprivation measures were accepted and new questions were included in the 2023/24 FRS. To aid assessment of a break in the series, the 2023/24 sample was split with 75% answering the new material deprivation questions and 25% the previous questions. Thereafter, only the new questions will be included.

The items and activities in the revised material deprivation measures for working-age adults, children and pensioners are shown in the table below.

	Working-age	Children	Pensioners
Household-level
Able to pay bills without cutting back on essentials	Yes	Yes	Yes
Able to put money aside for unexpected expenses	Yes	Yes	Yes
Cover cost of repair or to replace appliances	Yes	Yes	Yes
Home in good state of decoration/repair	Yes	Yes	Yes
Home adequately warm in cold weather	Yes	Yes	Yes
Home damp free	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reliable access to internet at home	Yes	Yes	Yes
Access to computer/tablet	Yes	Yes	Yes
Adequate access to reliable transport	Yes	Yes	Yes
Heating/electrics/plumbing in good working order	Yes	Yes	Yes
Home contents insurance	Yes	Yes	Yes
Individual-level
Three meals a day	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fresh fruit and/or vegetables every day	Yes	Yes	Yes
Annual break away from home	Yes	Yes	Yes
Without regular money worries	Yes		Yes
Regular payments to workplace or private pension	Yes
Appropriate clothes for work/job interview	Yes
Regular dental appointments	Yes		Yes
Go out socially at least monthly	Yes		Yes
See friends and family at least monthly	Yes		Yes
Small amount of money for oneself	Yes		Yes
School trips		Yes
Enough clothes feel comfortable wearing		Yes
Organised weekly activity outside school		Yes
Friends round monthly		Yes
Age suitable toys/games		Yes
Enough bedrooms for children 10+ years		Yes
Toddler/nursery/playgroup at least weekly		Yes
Place for homework		Yes

Recommendations related to the strength of different approaches for determining who is materially deprived

The review also examined and made recommendations in relation to the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches for determining who is materially deprived. These were:

1. determining optimum deprivation score thresholds
2. prevalence weighting
3. combining material deprivation status with low-income
4. using simple absence versus constrained lack

1) Recommendations in relation to determining optimum deprivation score thresholds

(a) It was not within the remit of the Review to recommend optimum thresholds for the revised measures; data collected in the FRS for the first year, rather than the smaller FRS test question dataset, is required for this. However, the Review assessed different methodological approaches and recommended using a combination of statistical analysis and judgement to determine where the new thresholds are set.  To provide full transparency to users, documentation detailing the decisions made, and why, should be published alongside the statistics.

(b) For the statistical modelling, we recommend DWP does not rely on household income alone to test which thresholds are best at discriminating between deprived and non-deprived groups.  We recommend the development of a composite standard of living measure which could include information on savings, debts and food security, and recognises differences in needs/costs faced by different household types. For example, single parent households or where any household member has a long-standing illness or disability.

2) Recommendations in relation to prevalence weighting and type of material deprivation measure

(a) Given the lower complexity and greater transparency of simple count measures, we recommend additional research to establish whether such a measure would have led to substantially different estimates of material deprivation over the last decade. If not, we recommend moving to a simple count measure.

(b) If prevalence weighting is continued, we recommend a number of items and activities should be given the maximum weight of one irrespective of prevalence rates.  The degree of deprivation felt by lacking some items is very unlikely to be affected by prevalence.  We recommend further exploratory work to assess the desirability of giving the maximum weight to a damp free home, keeping home adequately warm in cold weather, able to pay bills, three meals a day and daily fresh fruit and/or vegetables.

3) Recommendations in relation to combining material deprivation status with a low-income indicator

(a) To gain a clearer picture of poverty trends, we recommend that alongside the HBAI low income series and the combined low income and material deprivation series (a legal requirement for the child poverty measure), DWP publishes new HBAI headline series on material deprivation alone. Currently DWP release this measure via their online dissemination tool, Stat-Xplore, including the standalone metric in the publication would also meet some users concerns about the combined measure conflating two concepts (low income and material deprivation). 

(b) We recommend DWP headline statistics for combined measures are based on After Housing Costs and not Before Housing Costs income. This is a more realistic measure of the resources available to spend on necessities and consistent with other HBAI headline series. 

4) Recommendations in relation to simple absence versus constrained lack

(a) Evidence suggests that adaptive preferences mean that people underreport financially constrained lack of necessities. We recommend further research to understand income gradients in people reporting that they, or their children, lack items or activities due to not wanting or needing them. This research could lead to the use of simple absence rather than constrained lack to establish deprivation for a wider set of items or activities.

(b) Parents may be more likely than children to report child-related items are lacked because children don’t want or need them rather than not being able to afford them. We recommend further research to establish the feasibility of asking children (aged 11+) directly about whether they lack items or activities, and the reason(s) why they lack any.

Recommendations on developing a core set of questions for the whole population alongside measures aimed at specific family types

Recommendations were accepted for a core set of household-level items in the revised working-age, children and pensioner measures.  The Review went further, assessing the advantages and disadvantages of developing a whole population, or household-level, material deprivation measure. Challenges were identified including lack of a consistent relationship between individual-level measures and a measure constructed from household items alone. Therefore, we would not recommend moving to a measure based on household items alone, or combined with some individual-level items, at this point. If DWP wishes to pursue this further, the following work should be considered:

(a) For a measure based on the core household-level items alone, determine an optimum deprivation threshold, whether the measure should be based on wider constrained lack or financially constrained lack of items and whether material deprivation status should be combined with a low-income indicator.

(b) Assessing whether an alternative approach to defining household-level material deprivation could be based on whether any household member is classified as materially deprived according to the age-group specific measures which have passed statistical tests and validation from qualitative research. 

(c) Exploring whether estimates from the age-group specific material deprivation measures can be added together and combined to provide valid whole population estimates.  

Without further research, we recommend material deprivation is measured at the individual-level, based on the tried and tested measures for working-age adults, children and pensioners.