‘The impact of changes to direct taxes and benefits is to reduce the income of Bangladeshi households by around £4,400 per year on average’.
Four months after releasing their 2017 interim report, the Equality and Human Rights Commission have published their final cumulative impact assessment (pdf), in March 2018.
The report exposes how much individuals and households are expected to gain or lose, and how many adults and children will fall below an adequate standard of living, as a result of recent changes to taxes and social security.
The report finds:
- Negative impacts are particularly large for households with more disabled members, and individuals with more severe disabilities, as well as for lone parents on low incomes
- For some family types, these losses represent over 13% of average net income
- At an individual level, women lose on average considerably more from changes to direct taxes and benefits than men
- Lone parents in the bottom fifth of the household income distribution lose around 25% of their net income, on average
- Around 1.5 million more children are forecast to be living in households below the relative poverty line as a result of the reforms.
EDF and a number of our members have contributed to the development of this important research.