The poorest households are being charged a premium of up to 10p more for every £1 spent on essential goods and services, a report has estimated.
The extra charges cannot always be justified and the Government must push firms towards making costs fairer, the study by Consumer Futures and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said.
The report, Addressing the Poverty Premium, found that paying higher prices for utilities and credit could raise the cost of a minimum household budget by about 10%.
It highlights four major ways in which markets often force the poor to pay more.
Consumers on low incomes may be on higher tariffs for the same consumption of services such as power because they cannot pre-pay, or because they are excluded from the best deals. Some are charged more per unit of consumption because they are low users, and many poorer households may pay more because they cannot pay online or by direct debit.
Finally, deprived people frequently pay higher interest rates on consumer credit.
The report acknowledges that some customers can be costlier for firms to serve than others, but said people on low incomes were in a "weak bargaining position" because they had less choice about how they paid for services.
Some consumers used methods like pre-payment meters that cost them more, the study said. They could be paying higher-than-average utility tariffs, possibly because they were being sent a quarterly bill rather than paying online or they may be paying over the odds because they had to take out a deal they did not particularly use, such as a phone deal with a package of add-ons.
Where more basic packages are on offer, they are often priced at only a little below the average price, the report says, making them poor value compared with more exclusive packages.
Meanwhile, the report argued consumer credit is often only available at disproportionately high rates for the less well-off – rates much higher than is justifiable in terms of any additional risk from lending to them.
The analysis in the report was based on the costs people reported being charged for utilities and financial services.
It concluded someone on a lower income could end up paying about £19 more a week than the average consumer's weekly estimated household budget of £193.
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