Updated 28 September 2012
Rate of disability poverty technical description
| Short title | Rate of disability poverty |
|---|---|
| Technical definition | This indicator measures the percentage of individuals in families containing someone who is disabled with incomes below 60% of median income in a particular year. Data are adjusted for family size and composition, before deducting for housing costs, so we are comparing different household types in a robust way.
Disability is defined as having any illness, disability or impairment, for more than 12 months, that leads to a substantial difficulty with one or more areas of the individual’s life. |
| Rationale | Tackling disability poverty is important in terms of fairness, as families with a disabled person have a higher rate of low-income poverty than average. Using 60% of contemporary equivalised median as a poverty threshold is what has been done historically and internationally. |
| Formula |
We will produce a “Before Housing Costs” equivalised income for all individuals, calculate the median and then look at how many people in families containing someone who is disabled fall below a threshold of 60% of the median.
Worked Example The equivalised median real income “Before Housing Costs” in 2010-2011 was £419 a week for all individuals. Thus the 60% of median income threshold was £251 a week. Individuals in families containing someone who is disabled with a household income of £200 would therefore be in poverty |
| Start date | Data published in the Households Below Average Income series first published in 1988, sourced from the Family Resources Survey since 1994/95. |
| Good performance | Generally a statistically significant decrease in the indicator will demonstrate that an improvement has been achieved, but external factors such as wider economic conditions need to be taken into account. The confidence interval range for the 2010-2011 data is 18.9%-21.0% which results in a 95% confidence interval of around +/- 1 percentage points. |
| Behavioural impact | Perhaps – there could be an incentive to move those just below the threshold to just above the threshold. This allows maximum progress to be shown with minimum effort. However, it is quite difficult to target efforts so specifically, and other indicators of progress published in the Households Below Average Income series would show whether this had happened. If, for instance the proportion of individuals in families with a disabled person below 60% of median equivalised income fell, while child / pensioner material deprivation and the proportion of pensioners in households with below 50% of median income rose for individuals in families with a disabled person, this may be evidence of aiming at those just below the poverty line. Current policies do not do this. |
| Comparability | Measuring poverty using a 60% of equivalised median income threshold is widely used internationally as a way of measuring relative poverty. |
| Collection frequency | Annually http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=hbai |
| Time lag | Around one year after the end of the survey period |
| Data source (which data collection it comes from) | Family Resources Survey (FRS) – with analysis by DWP |
| Type of data (Whether it is an official statistic, national statistic, survey, MI ) | National Statistics Survey data |
| Robustness and data limitations | Data are National Statistics produced to high professional standards. The quality of National Statistics products is assessed on a regular basis by the independent UK Statistics Authority
In 2010-2011, full interviews were completed in around 25,000 households in the UK. Measure does not include care home residents as the sample used for the survey consists of private households only. Relative to administrative records, the FRS is known to under-report benefit receipt, however the FRS is considered to be the best source for looking at benefit and tax credit receipt by characteristics not captured on administrative sources, and for looking at total benefit receipt on a benefit unit or household basis. Confidence intervals can be calculated for the headline statistics. Low income is one amongst a group of poverty measures. There are a variety of other measures of poverty that might be used. The data source, the Family Resources Survey, is sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions, and has been designed to meet its needs. The latest available figures indicated that 20% of individuals in disabled families were in low income households. The confidence interval suggest the true figure is between 18.9 and 21.0% and therefore the 95% confidence interval for the 2010/11 data is around +/- 1 percentage point |
| Collecting organisation | A consortium of the Office for National Statistics and the National Centre for Social Research under contract to DWP. |
| Return format | Unit and format of measurement is: Percentage |
| Geographical coverage | Regional – using three-years of data. |
| How indicator can be broken down | Any material collected on the Family Resources Survey can be broken down by low income, subject to sample size constraints. There are a wide range of additional breakdowns available including disaggregate data by age, ethnicity (using a three-year average), disability, maternity, gender and religion (Northern Ireland only). There is no current coverage of maternity, sexual identity and religion for Great Britain. Data on sexual identity and religion has been added to the survey for all respondents from April 2011. |
| Further guidance | Data is a SAS data file. Results are published in report format. |
