Low Pay and Income in Urban and Rural Areas: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

Summary. This paper examines the extent of urban–rural differences in low pay and the link between low pay and low incomes using data on urban and rural residents from the British Household Panel Survey for 1991–98. The results suggest that, overall, urban wages were significantly less than accessible rural but significantly more than remote rural wages even after adjustments were made for differences in observed characteristics. A lower percentage of urban workers who experienced low pay were also resident in low-income households. Lower urban in-employment and in-self-employment poverty were found relative to poor remote rural house-holds even after differences in the characteristics across the different samples were controlled for. 1