"This new metric accounts for the negative impact on people’s weekly income of inescapable costs such as childcare and the impact that disability has on people’s needs; and includes the positive impacts of being able to access liquid assets such as savings, to alleviate immediate poverty. The Commission’s metric also takes the first steps to include groups of people previously omitted from poverty statistics, like those living on the streets and those in overcrowded housing," Baroness Philippa Stroud, the commission's chair, said in the report's preface.
READ MORE: Child Poverty Rises, While Incomes Fall in Poor UK Households
The new data indicates that 12.1 percent of the UK population or about 7.7 million people live in persistent poverty.
The research showed that 2.7 million live less than 10 percent below than poverty line, which means that the smallest changes could help them move above that line. At the same time, 2.5 million people are at less than 10 percent above the poverty line, which means that the smallest changes could put them below that line.