A new report funded by the Nuffield Foundation and published by the Resolution Foundation has offered a bleak assessment of Britain’s stagnating living standards.
According to the 300-page tome, the UK is severely underperforming in terms of wage and housing growth when held up to its European counterparts, with middle-income Brits now 20% poorer than their middle-income comparatives in Germany and 9% poorer than their middle-income comparatives in France.
Titled 'Ending Stagnation', the report noted that between 1970 and 2007, real UK wages grew by 33% every decade. But following negative wage growth throughout the 2010s, real wages as of mid-2023 were stuck at where they were during the 2008 financial crisis.
As a result, the average UK worker has missed out on £10,700 a year in earnings following 15 years of lost wage growth.
In other words, if wages had continued to grow at their pre-financial crisis pace, the average wage today would be £43,000 rather than £32,300.
“It’s important to comprehend just how material these gaps are: the living standards of the lowest-income households in the UK are £4,300 lower than their French equivalents,” read the report.
It cited low growth and high inequality as the “toxic combination” causing a comparative decline in UK living standards.
“We might like to think of ourselves as a country on a par with the likes of France and Germany, but we need to recognise that, except for those at the top, this is simply no longer true when it comes to living standards,” read the executive statement.
According to the Resolution Foundation, the UK has also fallen far behind France and Italy when it comes to the number of homes relative to inhabitants.
New social rental builds fell from over 40,000 homes a year in the 1990s to just 8,000 a year over the past decade, though both sides of the aisle have pledged to tackle this issue.
“The 300,000 homes a year target included in the 2019 Conservative Manifesto and adopted by the Labour Party provides a good starting point, so long as they are focused in the areas of the country where housing costs are high or fast rising,” stated the Resolution Foundation.