The Minimum Income Standard

The Minimum Income Standard (MIS) is a research method developed in the UK, and now applied in other countries, to identify what incomes different types of households require to reach a socially acceptable living standard. The term has also been used to describe political criteria used openly or implicitly by some governments to assess the adequacy of income levels. MIS is the basis for the calculation of the UK Living wage.

MIS was originally funded, in 2006, under the title of a Minimum Income Standard for Britain, by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and carried out in partnership by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University and the Family Budget Unit at the University of York. The research is now fully carried out by CRSP. MIS represents a budget standard in its specification of the level of disposable income households need in order to achieve an adequate standard of living. MIS may also be referred to as a reference budget, as it provides a costed list of items that households need to buy.

Unlike some other kinds of reference budget that draw heavily on expert input, MIS is informed by budget lists drawn up by members of the public, checked by experts, and approved by final ‘check-back’ groups of members of the public. The use of consensual focus groups was developed at CRSP in the 1990s, while the FBU focused on expert-based standards. MIS brought these two approaches together. Detailed research with members of the public takes forward Peter Townsend (sociologist) work on relative poverty and low income, which argued that living conditions must be seen in the context of widely held expectations of the resources that members of a society should have. The first MIS orientation groups were tasked with setting a definition of MIS, which continues to be used to define the Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom: ‘a minimum standard of living in Britain today includes, but is more than just, food, clothes and shelter. It is about having what you need in order to have the opportunities and choices necessary to participate in society’.

The original research was carried out in Britain in 2007 and the findings presented in 2008 were costed using April 2008 prices. Every July, new MIS figures are published, updated to April of the same year. The updates take on board inflation and changes in minimum needs.

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