Is life becoming less affordable?

What the chart shows

Each line starts at zero. If a line climbs, that item now takes more of a typical full-time pay packet than it did at the start. If it falls, the item takes less. Everything on the chart costs more in pounds than it did at the start. The chart shows whether each price rose faster or slower than pay.

“Typical” means a full-time worker in the middle, with half earning more and half earning less. That pay was about £21 a week in 1970 and about £765 a week in 2025. [1]

Taking less of a pay packet, or about the same

Taking more of a pay packet

The largest item on the chart is the house. The average UK house price went from about £3,700 in 1970 to about £267,000 in 2025. [3] That is roughly 72 times as much, while pay rose about 37 times. At the peak in 2022, an average house cost nearly eight years of typical pay.

Why the split?

There is no single cause, but the items fall into three rough groups.

1. Things that can be produced in bulk got cheaper to make

   Farming is the clearest example. UK farms produce about a third more than they did in 1973, and use fewer resources to do it. [11] That is one reason basic foods cost less against pay.

2. Homes can't be made in bulk, and borrowing got cheaper

   Economists disagree about the balance. Two economists writing on the Bank of England's staff blog in 2020 found that the long fall in interest rates since the mid-1980s could account for all of the rise in house prices compared with incomes. They also noted that the supply of new homes responds only weakly when prices rise. [12]

   Centre for Cities, a research institute, puts the weight on planning rules. It estimates that the UK has built at least 4.3 million fewer homes since the 1950s than it would have at the average rate of other European countries. [13]

3. Some prices are set by a decision

   The government sets the prescription charge. It was held at 20p for most of the 1970s, then raised to £1 by the end of 1980 and raised repeatedly after that. [4]

   Football clubs set their own ticket prices. Grounds in the top two divisions had to become all-seater by August 1994, after the Hillsborough disaster, which ended the old standing terraces there. [14]

   Bus fares in England rose by 7% in the year to March 2025, when prices in general rose by 3%. A national cap on single fares went from £2 to £3 in January 2025. [15]

What this means for everyday life

Taken together, the lines show small, frequent costs falling against pay, while the largest cost most people ever face has risen.

Cheaper basics are a real gain

Food takes a much smaller slice of household budgets than it used to. Between 1957 and 2017, the share of household spending that went on food halved, from 33% to 16%. The share that went on clothing halved too, from 10% to 5%. [16] That freed up money for other things.

But they are a shrinking part of what people buy

The chart follows basics such as a plain white loaf. People buy far less white bread than they used to. The government reported in 2016 that households were buying 75% less white bread than in 1974, and more than twice as many ready meals as in 1989. [17] About a quarter of what households spend on food and drink now goes on eating out. [18]

So a shopping basket of 1970 basics is cheaper, but it is not the basket most people fill today. The one ready-to-eat meal on the chart, fish and chips, has risen faster than pay since 2019.

And the fall has not reached everyone

For a while the long fall went into reverse. Food prices rose by about 25% between January 2022 and January 2024, after rising by 9% over the ten years before. [19] It shows on the chart: a pint of milk averaged 43p in 2021 and 67p in 2023 [2], while pay rose by about 13%. [1]

Food also takes more of a tight budget. The poorest fifth of households put 14.3% of their spending into food and soft drinks to have at home. The average household puts in 11.3%. [18] Food banks in the Trussell network gave out more than 2.6 million emergency food parcels in 2025. [20]

Cheap food is not always healthy food. The Food Foundation, a charity, calculates that healthier foods cost more than twice as much per calorie as less healthy ones. It says the most deprived fifth of the population would need to spend 45% of their disposable income on food to follow the government's healthy eating advice. [21]

Housing now takes more than food

Over the same 60 years in which food's share of household spending halved, housing's share doubled, from 9% to 18%. [16]

The official measure of affordability tells the same story as the chart. In 2025 a mid-priced home cost 7.6 times the middle full-time salary in England, and 6.0 times in Wales. [22]

Fewer young adults now own a home. In Britain, 31% of 25 to 34-year-olds owned their home in 2022–23, down from 55% in 1990, according to the Resolution Foundation, a think tank. Over the same period the share renting from a private landlord more than tripled, from 10% to 33%. [23]

Renting takes a bigger share of income than a mortgage does. Private renters in England spend 34% of their household income on rent. Owners with a mortgage spend 19% on their mortgage. The average first-time buyer in England is now 34, and 31% of them had help from family or friends with the deposit. [24]

Prescriptions: free for most, costly for some

Around 89% of prescriptions in England are dispensed free, because children under 16, people aged 60 and over, pregnant women and some other groups do not pay. [5] The rest of the UK has abolished the charge. [26]

The rise falls on working-age adults in England who pay. In a 2023 survey for a group of charities that campaign against the charge, almost 1 in 10 people with a long-term health condition said they had not collected a prescription in the past year because of the cost. [27]

Not every measure points the same way

• Borrowing used to cost far more. The Bank of England's interest rate reached 17% in November 1979. From February 2009 to June 2022 it was 1% or lower. [25] A buyer in the 1970s and 1980s needed fewer years of pay to buy a house, but paid much more interest on every pound borrowed.
• More households now have two wages. In 1975 both adults worked in 49% of couples with children. By 2015 it was 68%. [28] The chart compares prices with one person's pay. A household with two wages is better placed than the chart suggests. A household with one is not.
• Most households own their home. In England, 65% of households are owner-occupiers. [24] For them, rising prices raised the value of something they already had.
• Home ownership among the young has recovered a little. The rate for 25 to 34-year-olds was about 25% at its lowest, in the mid-2010s, and had risen to 31% by 2022–23. [23]
• A football ticket is not the same product. The 1970 price bought a place to stand. The 2025 price buys a seat in an all-seater ground. [14]
• The chart shows a dozen items, not everything. It leaves out many things, such as clothing, that take a smaller share of spending than they used to. [16] It also leaves out rent, childcare and energy.

About the figures

• Pay is the point halfway between the middle full-time weekly wage for men and the middle full-time weekly wage for women in Great Britain, before tax. [1] It leaves out part-time and self-employed workers.
• Shop prices are official average prices. The 2025 figures are January prices, not averages for the whole year. [2]
• Start dates differ. Lager starts in 1987 and diesel in 1977, so those lines cannot be compared directly with lines that start in 1970.
• Some lines are estimates. Bus fares before 1987 and Manchester United tickets for some seasons between 2001 and 2023 are estimated from the figures either side. Fish and chips before 2019 rests on rough published figures. Treat those lines as a guide to the direction, not as exact figures.
• The prescription charge is the standard charge per item in England. It does not show what patients pay on average, because most items are free.
• The house price is the UK average from the official UK House Price Index. [3]

Sources and further reading

These sources support the figures and examples in this section. Most are official statistics. Some are think tanks, charities or campaign groups with a point of view, and are described as such. They don't all agree on why prices moved as they did or on what should be done.

1. Office for National Statistics: Earnings time series of median gross weekly earnings from 1968 to 2025 (2025) — the pay figures behind the chart: the middle full-time weekly wage for men and for women, from the New Earnings Survey and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. The chart uses the point halfway between the two.
2. Office for National Statistics: Consumer price inflation time series – average price of a sliced white loaf, 800g (2026) — one of the official average price series used for the chart. The others are milk (series CZNT), cheddar cheese (CZNW), instant coffee (CZNP), diesel (CZML), draught lager (CZMS) and draught bitter (CZMT).
3. HM Land Registry: UK House Price Index – data downloads July 2026 (2026) — official average UK house prices. The chart uses the average of the monthly figures for each year.
4. Hansard: Prescription Charges, House of Commons written answer, 6 July 1992 (1992) — the standard prescription charge at each change from 1970 to 1992.
5. Department of Health and Social Care: Cost of living boost for millions as prescription charges frozen (2025) — the £9.90 charge, the share of prescriptions dispensed free in England, and who is exempt.
6. Red11: archive of Manchester United admission prices by season — adult admission prices at Old Trafford from 1970–71 to 2000–01. This is a fan-run archive, not an official record.
7. Football Ground Guide: report on Manchester United ticket prices for 2025–26 (2025) — the club's match-by-match prices for members, from £37 for the lowest-priced league games to £97 for the highest.
8. Office for National Statistics: RPI – bus and coach fares, January 1987 = 100 (2026) — the official measure of how bus and coach fares have changed each year since 1987.
9. Restaurant Online: Fish and chip prices rise by 50% in five years (2024) — a trade press report of Office for National Statistics estimates, first reported by the BBC: £6.48 in July 2019 and £9.88 in July 2024, with the reasons shop owners gave.
10. Hansard: Fish and Chip Sector, House of Commons debate, 3 February 2026 (2026) — an MP quotes the Office for National Statistics average of £10.96 for December 2025. The debate also covers the costs behind the rise.
11. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2024 – Chapter 5: Productivity (2025) — how much more UK farms produce, and how much less they use, than in 1973.
12. Bank Underground: What's been driving long-run house price growth in the UK? (2020) — David Miles and Victoria Monro, on the Bank of England's staff blog, on the part played by falling interest rates and by the slow supply of new homes.
13. Centre for Cities: Four million UK homes missing due to outdated planning laws (2023) — a research institute's estimate of how many more homes the UK would have if it had built at the rate of other European countries, and its case that planning rules are the cause.
14. Sports Grounds Safety Authority: All-seated football stadia — the government's adviser on ground safety on the all-seater rule for the top two divisions, which followed the Hillsborough disaster.
15. Department for Transport: Annual bus statistics – year ending March 2025 (2025) — how fast local bus fares in England rose compared with prices in general, and the national cap on single fares.
16. Office for National Statistics: Celebrating 60 years of Family Spending (2018) — how the shares of household spending that go on food, housing and clothing changed between 1957 and 2017.
17. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: New data reveals the nation's changing tastes (2016) — what four decades of household food diaries show about falling purchases of white bread and rising purchases of ready meals.
18. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: Family Food FYE 2024 (2025) — what households spend on food and drink, how much of it goes on eating out, and how the share differs for the poorest fifth.
19. Office for National Statistics: Cost of living insights – Food (2024) — the rise in food prices between January 2022 and January 2024, compared with the ten years before.
20. Trussell: End of year food bank stats (2026) — the anti-poverty charity's count of emergency food parcels given out by its food banks in 2025.
21. The Food Foundation: The Broken Plate 2025 (2025) — a food policy charity's figures on the cost of healthier and less healthy foods, and on what a healthy diet would cost the most deprived households.
22. Office for National Statistics: Housing affordability in England and Wales – 2025 (2026) — the official comparison of house prices with full-time earnings.
23. Resolution Foundation: Housing hurdles – the changing housing circumstances of young people in Britain (2024) — a think tank's analysis of how many 25 to 34-year-olds own, rent privately or live with their parents, compared with 1990.
24. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government: English Housing Survey 2024 to 2025 – headline report (2025) — how many households own or rent, the share of income that goes on rent and mortgages, and the age and deposits of first-time buyers.
25. Bank of England: Bank Rate history and data — every change in the Bank of England's interest rate since 1975.
26. Chemist+Druggist: 19 steps to today's prescription charge (2015) — a pharmacy trade magazine's history of the charge in England, and its abolition in the rest of the UK.
27. The Pharmaceutical Journal: Survey reveals 9% of people with long-term health conditions cannot afford to collect their prescriptions (2023) — a report of a survey of 4,014 people for the Prescription Charges Coalition, a group of organisations campaigning to end the charge in England.
28. Institute for Fiscal Studies: The rise and rise of women's employment in the UK (2018) — how the share of couples with children where both adults work changed between 1975 and 2015.