I don't know for sure but I suspect that people in the UK paid more attention to total personal wealth including property asset values, which were rising at a p

I don't know for sure but I suspect that people in the UK paid more attention to total personal wealth including property asset values, which were rising at a pretty ridiculous rate. To put this into perspective with an anecdote, I know a family who bought a house about 10 years ago to rent out in an up and coming area for £60k. Two years later they bought the house next door for 220k. Now each house is worth around £400-500k. This isn't even in London/the South where the rises were even greater. So property assets perhaps made up for relatively low income, and I feel that the government at the time played up to this. I also know a lot of people who took debts against their homes to increase their cash flow and buy cars, kitchens, etc with it. EDIT: Of course, now the situation is different, with the property market being flat. Who knows what will happen from now on, but our new government has made noises about making sure the property market less important to the economy.