The term has also been used to describe political criteria used openly or implicitly by some governments to assess the adequacy of income levels.
[2] MIS was originally funded, in 2006, under the title of a Minimum Income Standard for Britain, by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and carried out in partnership by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University and the Family Budget Unit at the University of York.
[5] MIS researchers facilitate a sequence of deliberative Focus groups, all of which have detailed negotiations to come to a consensus about the things a household would have to be able to afford in order to achieve an acceptable living standard.
The MIS method develops negotiated consensus through projection, whereby group members are asked not to think of their own needs and tastes but of the needs of hypothetical individuals or case studies.
Participants are asked to imagine they are in the home of the individuals under discussion and to explain what items they would need in their everyday life to reach the living standard set out in the definition of MIS.
In identifying things that everyone should be able to afford, MIS does not attempt to specify extra requirements for particular individuals and groups: for example, those resulting from living in a remote location or having a disability.
It is important that this basket of goods is regularly updated, based on the views and experiences of ordinary people across all four nations of the UK about what is required to fully participate in society, and how social norms and needs change over time.
Outside the United Kingdom, the CRSP team has applied the method in Guernsey[13] and supported studies in other countries.
Projects adopting the MIS method have been undertaken in the Republic of Ireland,[14] France,[15] Japan,[16] Portugal and Austria.
Thus households classified as in relative income poverty are generally unable to reach an acceptable standard of living as defined by members of the public.