A petition calling on Conservative minister Iain Duncan Smith to demonstrate he can live on £53 (€62.50) per week passed 150,000 signatures today.
The British Work and Pensions Secretary claimed yesterday he could get by on the curtailed budget if he “had to”.
The remark followed a challenge by market trader David Bennett on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
The online petition, hosted at change.org, said: “This petition calls on Iain Duncan Smith to live on this budget for at least one year. This would help realise the Conservative Party’s current mantra that ‘We are all in this together’.
“This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax.”
The exchange came as 660,000 social housing tenants deemed to have a spare room began to lose an average £14 a week in what critics have dubbed a “bedroom tax”.
Wider welfare and tax changes coming into force this month will also see council tax benefit funding cut, and working-age benefits and tax credit rises pegged at 1 per cent - well below inflation - for three years.
Disability living allowance is being replaced by the personal independence payment, while trials are due to begin in four London boroughs of a £500-a-week cap on household benefits, and of the new Universal Credit system.
Mr Duncan Smith, a former Army officer, said yesterday the changes were about “fairness”.
He told the programme: “We inherited a problem where we simply do not have the money to spend on all the things people would like us to do.
“What I am trying to do is get this so we don’t spend money on things that are unfair.”
Mr Bennett told the programme he earned about £2,700 last year working between 50 and 70 hours a week.
Mr Bennett said his housing benefit had been cut even though his children stayed with him several days a week, and that his overall income was now about £53 per week. It was not clear why Mr Bennett was not receiving tax credits.