Equivalisation is the process through which many poverty measures account for the variations in needs of families of different sizes and compositions. The Commission’s 2018 report highlighted its concerns over the seemingly arbitrary nature of the UK’s current approach. In response, the Commission has undertaken a programme of work to explore the nature and use of equivalisation both in the UK and internationally and test a range of different equivalisation approaches on the Commission’s poverty measure. This report summarises this work and makes recommendations for how take forward future work to assess the appropriateness of the current approach and, where necessary, develop a new equivalisation scale for the UK.
