The working poor – a 21 st century crisis Everywhere you look, costs are increasing. In the year 2022, with prices skyrocketing and wages not keeping up, working households are unnecessarily living in poverty. It’s time we act now to narrow the gap between income and expenditure. Working poverty in the UK 17.4% of working households in the UK are currently living in poverty (The Guardian, 2021). This means that individuals are giving up to 40 hours a week of their time to an employer, and still not earning enough money to survive. This poverty will be felt in various ways across the UK - meals not eaten, bills unpaid, clothes gone without, and showers skipped. Working families are having to take out credit cards and loans to keep their heads above water, putting them in a vicious cycle of having more debt to pay back, with the same amount of money coming in. These households teeter on the edge of having to use the benefits system as a form of survival – wi...