Asset poverty is a measure of whether a household can support itself using savings or other available assets for 12 weeks at a poverty-level income.

Poverty is poverty, a pain in the asset.

In the UK, the startling rise of prices for basics such as food, public transport and energy has been coupled with a savage rise in income tax only for the poorest paid. Add to that the recursive taxes (those such as VAT, duty, whereby the proportion of income paid by poor and better off is greatly disparate), and above inflation rises in local tax (council tax), and millions have just discovered what asset poverty is. To make matters worse, the UK has no political party that represents the interests of the poor.