Close Menu
    UK living standards now worse than debt-ridden Italy despite Reeves' efforts
    United Kingdom

    UK living standards now worse than debt-ridden Italy despite Reeves’ efforts

    Share.
    View 26 Comments

    26 Comments

    2. PositivelyAcademical on

      The economy: Smashed.

      The gangs: Turbocharged.

      That’s what Keir promised, right?

    3. cennep44 on

      The article offers no evidence for the claim other than our GDP per capita has fallen slightly below Italy’s? Just low quality rage bait, boring.

    4. FlyWayOrDaHighway on

      THE TORIES WERE IN POWER FOR 14 YEARS THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH REEVES

      For fuck’s sake I hate Labour right now too but who the actual fuck is naive enough to think the culmination of the last decade or more’s austerity is “despite Reeves’ efforts”

    5. Green-Operation-9309 on

      Rage bait. italy is barely first world. This is why they’re all trying to come here.

    6. Chevalitron on

      GDP per capita and living standards aren’t the same thing though, are they? Even assuming GDP did divide equally like that, it says nothing about how much the average person can buy with it where they are, or what their local infrastructure or job conditions are like. It isn’t the 60s when living standards could be measured by whether you could afford a fridge and a television.

    7. GuyLookingForPorn on

      Presenting GDP per capita as living standards is so economically illiterate its insane this got published by a mainstream news company. They didn’t even use Purchasing Power Parity.

    8. BcDownes on

      Using GDP (PPP) the measure that has Russia as the fourth largest economy… yawn

      Nominally per capita the uk is ahead of italy by $14,000 and even then GDP per capita (nominal) is a stupid measure of “living standards”. Its the type of shit Americans try to use to say people living in North Carolina have better living standards than Australia or the Netherlands

      Like they posted this data (not the specific article) this to /r/Europe and it got deleted for essentially being misleading lmao

      https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1mmn6bj/in_2024_italys_gdp_per_capita_has_surpassed_the_uk/

    9. NoEntertainment4498 on

      The metric they’re trying to use in this comparison would also place Italy ahead of those well known hellholes Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

    11. cosmic_monsters_inc on

      Maybe because the cost of everything goes up but our incomes stay the same and their solution is more tax.

    12. Jared_Usbourne on

      Ah, so an ageing shrinking population is actually a **good** thing as it temporarily delivers higher GDP per capita

      That’s a bold take…

    13. NuggetKing9001 on

      I mean I know they’re not knocking it out of the park, but I’m sure it takes a while to unfuck years of austerity.

    14. big_cheese8642 on

      Isn’t something like 50℅ and more of the population are on a salary between 24k and 35k? So the average person is just getting done over

    15. ash_ninetyone on

      GDP per capita is not an entirely reliable measure of living standards or income. It measures the size of the economy per person. It typically correlates to it, but not always. Gini Coefficient typically measures inequality.

      The Human Development Index is a more reliable indicators of standard of living (not perfect, but better, because it takes into account education, healthcare, real world income). Our HDI ranks us higher than Spain, France and Italy.

    16. Next_Replacement_566 on

      Because there’s no consequences for the extremely rich who’ve sapped everything from the economy

    19. poodleenthusiast28 on

      I’m a very data driven person but right now, I don’t need statistics to know this. Just look at the schools and hospitals and the conditions public sector heroes are working under.

    20. 101m4n on

      Funny how we weren’t being constantly bombarded with stories about collapsing living standards when the tories were in charge…

    22. Stock_Ad_5279 on

      Anyone with even a basic understanding of welfare and healthcare would not find this surprising. Please, people, I know you were born on an island, probably speak only one language, and that the A-level system meant you narrowed your studies at 14, leaving gaps in your general education, but try looking at our neighbours in the EU, not just the USA, when making comparisons.

    25. this-user-name-sucks on

      Reeves’ efforts? In this, they show that the bottom half of earners are expected to be 1% worse off by 2029–30 compared to 2024–25, and 2% below 2019–20 levels. The very poorest households face the sharpest decline: 8% worse off by the end of the decade versus 2019-20. Child poverty is projected to rise by 3% by 2029–30 as well [The Living Standards Outlook 2025](https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-living-standards-outlook-2025/)

      In another, the bottom 20% of earners face over a 6% income drop by 2030 – four times faster than higher-income households. Mortgage holders among them likely to pay £1,460 more annually, private renters £950 more, and social renters £450 more, by 2030. Crucially, this doesn’t include planned cuts to health-related components of Universal Credit, further eroding incomes. Broader analysis forecasts that by 2030, the average UK family will be 3% worse off. If these trends continue, it would mark the first full-term decline in living standards since 1955! [A year of Labour but no progress: JRF’s cost of living tracker, summer 2025 | Joseph Rowntree Foundation](https://www.jrf.org.uk/cost-of-living/jrfs-cost-of-living-tracker-summer-2025)

    26. Dull_World4255 on

      Discussing things like this is so frustrating at times. People always seek find a metric but which they can present a result favourable to their agenda and ideology. Ironically, they’ll do so, while complaining about mainstream media outlets doing the exact same thing lol.

      Forget political affiliation for a moment and just acknowledge the fact that the country is not in a good place financially atm. And this is before the government as to find a way to plug the £40b-£50b deficit it inflicted on itself

      Don’t be fooled by today’s reports of ecominc growth either. The economy is grinding to a slow halt right now. The first quarter of the year was very misleading and a false positive in reality. This is because there was a huge increase in production to avoid incoming US tariffs, as well as high property sales before the impending removal of a tax break