Emily Harris and Matthew Oakley from the Social Metrics Commission’s Secretariat introduce the release of the code underlying the Commission’s new poverty measure.
What is the Social Metrics Commission?
The Social Metrics Commission was set up in 2016 as an independent commission to build a new consensus around poverty measurement.
Measuring poverty is essential if we are to take decisive action to tackle it. However, in the UK there has been much disagreement over how poverty should be measured and currently there is south korea rcs data no agreed UK Government measure of poverty. Led by the CEO of the Legatum Institute, Baroness Stroud, the Commission’s membership draws on a group of top UK poverty thinkers from different political and professional backgrounds.
In 2018 the Commission launched its new approach to measuring poverty. As well as looking at income, the new metric accounts for the positive impact of people’s liquid assets on alleviating immediate poverty but also the range of inescapable costs that reduce people’s spending power.
In addition to reporting on the number of families in poverty, the Commission’s approach also provides measures of the depth and persistence of poverty, as well as including a range of Lived Experience Indicators that capture issues such as mental and physical health, employment, isolation, and community engagement.