Inflation & how it affects those who earn the least.
The inflation rate in the UK has risen to 5.4%, the highest rate of inflation for 30 years, and it is expected to keep rising. Inflation is the rate at which prices rise, for example, if milk was £1 and the price rose to £1.05, the inflation rate for milk would be 5%.
Though these price rises are often overlooked on a month-to-month basis, it is much more noticeable at the moment, as average pay is not keeping up. That means that the money we earn does not go as far. In the year to November ‘21, regular pay, adjusted for inflation, fell by 1%.
With that being said, the real life impact on those who have a lower household income is much worse. According to food-writer, chef, and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, the inflation figure of 5.4% “grossly underestimates the real cost of inflation as it happens to people with the least.”
One reason for this is that the cheapest products are seeing the biggest price hikes, and another is that supermarkets are cutting down on the amount of products available in their value ranges, which lower-income families rely on the most. These families and households already spend a much larger share of their income on food and energy (another cost that is rising rapidly), and are less able to absorb rising prices.
Monroe, backed by the estate of author Terry Pratchett, is working on bringing in the ‘Vimes Boots Index’, based on the author’s character Captain Samuel Vimes’ ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness, which can be read via the embedded tweet below:
Some examples of the price rises affecting the cheapest products are; bread, which has risen by 29% from 45p to 58p, canned spaghetti, up 169%, a small bag of apples has risen by more than 50%, and largest of all, rice has risen by 344% from 45p per kilogram to £1 per 500g.
In response to Monroe’s research sparking the concern of the public, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced that it will now change how it measures the everyday costs of households, analysing more price points, up from 180,000 to hundreds of millions, using prices directly from supermarkets.
With more accurate research being carried out into the cost of living in the UK, we can only hope that rates of support may rise to help out those that need it most, as well as the National Living Wage (which will rise by 6.6% in April ‘22) continuing to rise. Although if rates of National Insurance continue to rise too, people will continue to see a noticeable drop in their “real” wages.
While people seem to be listening and supermarkets appear keen to communicate with Monroe, initiatives such as Hartlepool Food Network will continue to play a huge part in ensuring all people in the local community have access to nutritional food, whether they access our service directly, or receive items that we have donated to our member organisations.
We remain committed to providing food, that would otherwise end up in landfill, and broadening our approach to include more educational content on how we can all feed ourselves affordably, grow our own food, and cook nutritious meals for our families.
