Britons are taking on record levels of debt because they are greedy and want to copy the lifestyles of the super-rich, research claimed yesterday.

Despite having relatively high incomes, 60 per cent of Britons believe they cannot afford to buy everything they really need, according to a study by an academic at the University of Cambridge.

Just under half of people who earn more than £35,000 say they do not have enough money for "essentials", while 40 per cent of people on incomes of more than £50,000 feel the same way.

Dr Clive Hamilton, a visiting scholar at the university, said Britons' sense of deprivation was linked to so-called luxury fever.

He said the desire to emulate the lifestyles of the very rich had led to booming sales of trophy homes, luxury cars and cosmetic surgery.

But he warned that the scaling up of these "needs" had generally outpaced growth in incomes, leaving many people who were wealthy by historical or international standards actually feeling poor.

Dr Hamilton, who has conducted a similar survey in Australia, worked with the British Market Research Bureau to measure attitudes to consumption.

He found that items that were once considered luxuries were now seen as essential, and added that the proportion of "suffering rich" in the UK appeared to be even higher than in the US.

But the research found that people's greed had led to them racking up unprecedented debts, with credit card debt trebling during the past seven years, accompanied by a sharp rise in bankruptcies.

The nation's savings rate has also halved since 1993, as the middle classes are no longer prepared to delay their gratification.

Dr Hamilton said: "The real concerns of yesterday's poor have become the imagined concerns of today's rich.

"This 'deprivation syndrome' induces politicians to distort policy to reduce the burden of taxation and increase public payments to wealthy households.

"This emphasis on the tribulations of the middle classes crowds out sympathy for those who are genuinely struggling."

He added Britons were sacrificing time spent with their families or at leisure to work longer hours to fund their increasingly ambitious lifestyles.

Friday September 5, 2003