Households Below Average Income, 1994/95-2022/23

 
<p>The <em>Households Below Average Income </em>(HBAI) data presents information on living standards in the UK based on household income measures for the financial year.
</p>
<p>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 (that is, 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.</p>
<p>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 consistent comparison over time and across households of different sizes and compositions. HBAI uses variants of CPI inflation when estimating how incomes are changing in real terms over time.</p>
<p>The main data source used in this study is the Family Resources Survey (FRS), a continuous cross-sectional survey. The FRS normally has a sample of 19,000 - 20,000 UK households. The use of survey data means that HBAI estimates are subject to uncertainty, which can affect how changes should be interpreted, especially in the short term. Analysis of geographies below the regional level is not recommended from this data.</p>
<p>Further information and the latest publication can be found on the gov.uk <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/households-below-average-income-hbai--2">HBAI</a> webpage. The HBAI team want to provide user-friendly datasets and clearer documentation, so please contact <a href="mailto:[e-mail]">[e-mail]</a> if you have any suggestions or feedback on the new harmonised datasets and documentation.</p>
<p>An earlier HBAI study, <em>Institute for Fiscal Studies Households Below Average Income Dataset, 1961-1991</em>, is held under SN 3300.</p>
<p><strong>Latest Edition Information</strong></p>
<p>For the 18th edition (April 2024), resamples data for 2023 have been added to the study alongside supporting documentation. Main data back to 1994/95 have been updated to latest-year prices.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Using the HBAI files</span></p>
<p>Users should note that either <a href="https://www.7-zip.org/index.html">7-Zip</a> or a recent version of
<a href="https://www.winzip.com/en/">WinZip</a> is needed to unzip the HBAI download zip files, due to their size. The inbuilt Windows compression software will not handle them correctly.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">HBAI versions</span></p>
<p>The HBAI datasets are available in two versions at the UKDS:<br>
</p>
<p><strong>1. End User Licence (EUL) (Anonymised) Datasets:</strong></p>
<p>These datasets contain no names, addresses, telephone numbers, bank account details, NINOs or any personal details that can be considered disclosive under the terms of the ONS Disclosure Control guidance. Changes made to the datasets are as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>All ages above 80 are instead top-coded to 80 years of age. </li><li>The variable for the amount of Council Tax liability for the household and pensioner flags for the head and spouse have been removed.
</li><li>All amount variables have been rounded to the nearest £1. </li><li>A very small number of large households (with 10 or more individuals) have been removed from the dataset.
</li></ul>
<p><strong>2. Secure Access Datasets:</strong></p>
<p>Secure Access datasets for HBAI are held under SN 7196<span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>The Secure Access data are not subject to the same edits as the EUL version and are, therefore, more disclosive and subject to strict access conditions.</span> They are currently only available <span>to UK HE/FE applicants</span><span>. Prospective users of the Secure Access version of the HBAI must fulfil additional requirements beyond those associated with the EUL datasets.</span></p>

低收入家庭（Households Below Average Income, HBAI）数据集呈现了英国本财政年度基于家庭收入核算的生活水平相关信息。

HBAI采用等价可支配家庭收入作为生活水平的代理指标，以实现不同类型家庭生活水平的可比分析——即通过等价调整过程，对收入进行修正以考量家庭规模与结构的差异，该过程被称为等价化。HBAI的核心假设为：家庭内所有个体均可均等享有家庭总收入。据此，可将家庭总等价收入作为每位家庭成员生活水平的代理指标。

遵循国际最佳实践，HBAI所采用的收入核算指标经过多项统计调整，因此并不完全等同于大众日常认知中的收入数额。但此类调整可确保不同时期、不同规模与结构的家庭间的收入比较具备一致性。在核算收入随时间的实际变动时，HBAI采用消费者物价指数（Consumer Price Index, CPI）的不同变体进行通胀修正。

本研究的主要数据源为家庭资源调查（Family Resources Survey, FRS），这是一项连续性横断面调查。FRS通常覆盖19000至20000户英国家庭。由于采用调查数据，HBAI的估算结果存在不确定性，这会影响对收入变化的解读，尤其是短期变化。此外，本数据集不建议用于区域以下层级的地理区域分析。

更多信息与最新出版物可访问gov.uk上的HBAI专题网页<https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/households-below-average-income-hbai--2>。HBAI团队致力于提供易用的数据集与更清晰的文档，若您对新的统一协调后的数据集与文档有任何建议或反馈，请联系[e-mail]。

早期的HBAI研究——《财政研究所低收入家庭数据集（1961-1991）》，其编号为SN 3300。

**最新版本信息**

对于第18版（2024年4月），本研究新增了2023年的重采样数据与配套文档。1994/95年以来的核心历史数据已更新至最新年度价格水平。

**HBAI数据集文件使用说明**

用户需注意，由于文件体积较大，解压HBAI下载的压缩包需使用7-Zip或较新版本的WinZip，Windows自带的压缩工具无法正确处理此类文件。

**HBAI数据集版本**

HBAI数据集在英国数据服务（UKDS）提供两个版本：

1. **终端用户许可（End User Licence, EUL）匿名数据集**

此类数据集不包含姓名、地址、电话号码、银行账户信息、国家保险号码（National Insurance Numbers, NINOs），也不存在符合英国国家统计局（Office for National Statistics, ONS）披露控制指南中可识别的个人细节。数据集所做的修正如下：
- 所有80岁以上的年龄均被封顶为80岁；
- 移除了家庭市政税负债额变量，以及户主与配偶的养老金标识；
- 所有金额变量均已四舍五入至最近的英镑整数；
- 移除了极少数包含10名及以上成员的大型家庭样本。

2. **安全访问数据集**

HBAI的安全访问数据集编号为SN 7196。此类数据集未经过与EUL版本相同的编辑修正，因此存在更高的披露风险，且需遵守严格的访问条件。目前仅面向英国高等教育/继续教育（Higher Education/Further Education, HE/FE）申请者开放。申请使用安全访问版HBAI的用户，需满足除EUL数据集以外的额外要求。