(When a family sees the value of its home rising, it is less apt to save for the future, because it is getting better off anyway).
"People are going to get better off as the economy grows, and it is growing and we want a successful economic policy to ensure it continues to.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said: "Universal credit looked good on the drawing board but round after round of big Treasury cuts have reduced its ability to help people get better off through earnings.
But the delight with which positive GDP figures or up-ratings in forecasts are greeted by politicians and central bankers owes more to their relief that their policies might be working than to any evidence that the general population is getting better off, let alone happier.
The results suggested that the introduction of BSSs shows a significant mixed impact on congestion in general: Larger cities get better off but richer cities get worse off.
We would all love the ship to go rolling on as it has, people getting better off and the state to go on providing lots of stuff".
That's another way of saying that even the poorest people are getting better off even though their relative standing may deteriorate.
"The better off are getting better off, and the worse off aren't getting any better off," said Alec Levenson, an economist at USC. "Economic gains are not spreading as uniformly across the population as they used to".
Poor people have got better-off thanks in part to the benefits of science and innovation, but the rich have benefited more, and the problems of poverty persist.
Broadly, this says that the rich can get as rich as they like, so long as the poor are getting better-off too.However, new figures out this week suggest that the bargain isn't working.
