New research released this week shows people living in rural areas typically need to spend 10-20 per cent more than people in urban areas to reach a minimum acceptable living standard.

These higher costs mean a single person living in a village needs to earn at least 50 per cent above the minimum wage (£5.93 per hour) to make ends meet. With low pay more common in rural areas, many rural workers fall well short of being able to afford their essential needs.

The research was carried out for the Commission for Rural Communities by the same team at Loughborough University that calculates the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom. This standard is based on what items ordinary people think households need to afford a minimum acceptable standard of living. The researchers talked to groups of people in rural England about what things are essential in rural towns, villages and hamlets.

The findings illustrate that the more remote the area, the greater the extra expense. To afford a minimum standard of living, a single person needs to earn at least, £15,600 a year in a rural town, £17,900 a year in a village, £18,600 in a hamlet or the remote countryside.

In comparison, urban dwellers need £14,400, to meet the specified minimum.

The report also found that a car is a significant additional cost for rural households because residents say public transport is insufficient to meet essential travel needs.

Many rural dwellers face higher energy bills as the lack of mains gas supply can mean having to use more expensive fuels, and older homes in rural areas can be less energy efficient

The location of rural services also has an impact on the cost of living, and this could be exacerbated if local services are cut.

For some people the picture is even starker: the largest additional budgets in the study are required by couple parents with two children. In a hamlet this family needs £72.20 more per week than a similar urban family.

The higher costs of living in rural areas contrast with widespread low rural pay. A worker in a rural district has a one in four higher chance of being low paid than someone in an urban district.

Report author Dr Noel Smith, Acting Director of Loughborough University's Centre for Research in Social Policy said, "We were struck by the gap between how much people would need to earn to meet these rural requirements and the level of some of the wages actually available. Workers in the most basic rural jobs can work very hard yet still fall well short of what they need for an acceptable standard of living."