DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-5828-14
title: Households Below Average Income, 1994/95-2020/21
title: Households Below Average Income, 1994/95-
title: HBAI

description: &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Households Below Average Income 1994/95-2020/21&lt;/em&gt; (HBAI) data presents information on living standards in the UK based on household income measures for the financial year. HBAI uses equivalised disposable household income as a proxy for living standards - in order to allow comparisons of the living standards of different types of households, income is adjusted to take into account variations in the size and composition of the households in a process known as equivalisation. A key assumption made in HBAI is that all individuals in the household benefit equally from the combined income of the household. This enables the total equivalised income of the household to be used as a proxy for the standard of living of each household member.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In line with international best practice, the income measures used in HBAI are subject to several statistical adjustments and, as such, are not always directly relatable to income amounts as they might be understood by people on a day-to-day basis. These adjustments, however, allow us to compare measures over time and across households of different sizes and compositions on a consistent basis. HBAI uses variants of CPI inflation when estimating how incomes are changing in real terms over time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main source of data used in this study is the &lt;a title="Family Resources Survey" href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=200017"&gt;Family Resources Survey&lt;/a&gt; (FRS), which is a continuous cross-sectional survey. The FRS has a sample of over 19,000 UK households so use of survey data means estimates produced are subject to uncertainty which can affect how changes should be interpreted, especially in the short term. Analysis at geographies below the regional level is not available from these data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Further information, along with the latest publication, can be found on the GOV.UK &lt;a title="HBAI" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/households-below-average-income-hbai--2"&gt;HBAI&lt;/a&gt; webpage. The HBAI team want to provide user-friendly datasets and clearer documentation so please contact &lt;a title="team.hbai@dwp.gov.uk" href="mailto:team.hbai@dwp.gov.uk" style="outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(35, 82, 124); text-decoration-line: underline;"&gt;team.hbai@dwp.gov.uk&lt;/a&gt; if you have any suggestions or feedback on the new harmonised datasets and documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;An earlier HBAI study, &lt;em&gt;Institute for Fiscal Studies Households Below Average Income Dataset, 1961-1991&lt;/em&gt;, is held at the UKDS under SN 3300.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Latest Edition Information (methodological revisions)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the 16th edition (June 2022), the 2020/21 data and documentation were added to the study, and the full back series of data and documentation (1994/95-2019/20) was replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users should note that either &lt;a href="https://www.7-zip.org/index.html"&gt;7-Zip&lt;/a&gt; or a recent version of &lt;a href="https://www.winzip.com/en/"&gt;WinZip&lt;/a&gt; is needed to unzip the HBAI download zip files, due to their size. The inbuilt Windows compression software will not handle them correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;HBAI versions&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The HBAI datasets are available in two versions at the UK Data Service:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. End User (Anonymised) Datasets:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;These datasets contain no names, addresses, telephone numbers, bank account details, NINOs or any personal details that can be considered as disclosive under the terms of the 'ONS Disclosure Control'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changes made to the datasets are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;All ages above 80 are coded to 80 years of age.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The variable for the amount of Council Tax liability for the household and pensioner flags for the head and spouse have been removed.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;All amount variables have been rounded to the nearest £1.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Large households (with 10 or more individuals) have been removed.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Safe Room Datasets:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All HBAI data are available without the above restrictions. Safe Room access datasets for HBAI are held under SN 7196, &lt;em&gt;Family Resources Survey and Households Below Average Income: Safe Room Access&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Safe Room access data are currently only available to UK HE/FE applicants and for access from the UK Data Archive's Safe Room at the University of Essex, Colchester. Prospective users of the Safe Room access version of the FRS/HBAI will need to fulfil requirements additional to those associated with standard End User Licence datasets. Full details of the application requirements are provided in the document &lt;a title="Guidance on applying for the Family Resources Survey: Secure Access" href="http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/178323/secure_frs_application_guidance.pdf"&gt;Guidance on applying for the Family Resources Survey: Secure Access&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;