Gordon Brown was in Downing Street, Beijing staged the Olympics and scientists switched on the Large Hadron Collider - many things may have changed since 2008 but the average household income is finally predicted to be the same.

However, new figures released today show incomes still well below the peak that they reached two years later, in 2010.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said changes to spending patterns also suggest that many think their wages will never fully recover.

The incomes rise has also been accompanied by a "historically slow" recovery in living standards, according to a new report by the think tank.

Robert Joyce, one of the authors of the report, warned whichever party wins May's General Election that the findings show that policies to boost productivity and increase salaries "are likely to have a bigger impact on living standards than changes in tax and benefit rates."

The downturn that followed the economic crash did not hit all groups equally, according to the IFS report.

Young people, those without children and those on higher incomes tended to have come off worse, it said.

While historically low mortgage rates have helped to ease the pressure on home owners, poorer households benefitted less as they were not as likely to own their property, according to the report.

Overall, the IFS said, large falls in real earnings have had a bigger effect on wealthier households, while poorer households have been hit harder by the rising cost of living.

The new IFS projections suggest that average household incomes in 2014/15 have reached the same levels as they were in 2007, before the financial crash.

However, they are still more than 2 per cent below what they were in 2009/10.

The IFS found that the average income of those aged 60 and over is projected to be 1.8 per cent higher in 2014/15 than it was in 2007/08.

But that of twenty-somethings, who have been particularly hit by unemployment and falls in wages, is estimated to be nearly 8 per cent lower.

While pensioners have been hard hit by rising food and energy costs they have also been helped by the "triple locking" of the state pension, the researchers said.

The ongoing recovery in living standards has been slow in comparison to previous recession, according to the findings.

Part of the problem is weak wages, as well as tax rises and benefit cuts, which the report says has squeezed incomes.

Household consumption is still below pre-crisis levels, the IFS found.

The purchase of "non durable" items such as food and fuel was almost 4 per cent down on early 2008.

The report said: "This might reflect households' perceptions that their income prospects have been permanently damaged by the crisis and that a significant cut to their spending is therefore required."

Across the UK, the typical middle income household without children had an income of £461 a week in 2014/15, £5 a week more than a year earlier and around the same level as in 2007.

But in 2009/10, middle income households had an average income of £473 a week in 2014/15 prices.

The figures, contained in a new election briefing note on living standards, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, said that the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition came to power just as incomes were starting their "inevitable" decline.

The report said it was "almost certain" that they would have fallen significantly under any government.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the 'pay gap' between London and the rest of the UK has been cut since the economic crash.

The average worker in London saw their pay increase 2.5 per cent in cash terms between April 2008 and April 2014.

But across the UK as a whole that figure was 5.9 per cent.