Official Statistics of the number and proportions of adults in poverty. Various poverty measures and breakdowns are available.
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National Statistics of the number and proportions of people living in private households with an equivalised household income below various poverty thresholds. For commentary and charts, please find the full report on gov.scot.
The different poverty datasets refer to different subgroups of the population. Datasets are available for:
More detail for each dataset and the available breakdowns follows further below.
Figures are presented as three-year rolling averages to ensure robust time series analyses. Ethnicity and religion breakdowns are presented as five-year averages due to small sample sizes. Note that ethnicity and religion estimates are particularly volatile. The reason for this is that ethnic and religious composition of the population are not accounted for in the survey weighting process, and therefore the ethnic and religious composition of the population is not accurately captured.
Where estimates are suppressed due to small sample size this is marked with an asterisk ("*"). Where estimates are between 0 and 0.5% this is marked as "[low]". Where estimates are missing for other reasons this is marked with a hyphen ("-"). Other reasons include changes in the methodology, or data being unavailable in some years.
The income measure used is equivalised net disposable income before and after housing costs. The before housing costs measure is income from all sources (including earnings, benefits, tax credits, pensions, and investments) after deductions for income tax, national insurance contributions, council tax, pension contributions and maintenance payments. The after housing costs measure further deducts housing costs such as rent and/or mortgage payments.
Equivalisation sums the income of all householders, adjusts it to reflect the composition of the household, and applies the resulting income to all householders. Private Scottish Households refers to all households that are not communal establishments such as hostels, prisons or hospitals, for example. The median is the middle value when the household income of all individuals in the UK are ranked in order. Sixty percent of the median is an internationally recognised poverty threshold.
Different poverty indicators measure different aspects of poverty.
Relative poverty: Individuals living in households whose equivalised income is below 60% of UK median income in the same year. This is a measure of whether those in the lowest income households are keeping pace with the growth of incomes in the economy as a whole.
Absolute poverty: Individuals living in households whose equivalised income is below 60% of inflation adjusted UK median income in 2010/11. This is a measure of whether those in the lowest income households are seeing their incomes rise in real terms.
Severe poverty: Similar to relative poverty, but with a threshold of 50% of UK median income in the same year. This is a measure of deeper poverty, identifying people in households further below the poverty line.
Relative and severe poverty (disability adjustment): Some illnesses and disabilities incur additional living costs. The poverty measures do not normally consider this. Research shows that additional costs associated with disability vary greatly in level and nature. There is no general agreement on how to measure these costs. In this measure, any payments in Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance and Personal Independence Payments were deducted from total household income. These benefits are paid as a contribution towards the additional living costs for disabled people. This income is excluded from total household income, and a new poverty line based on the adjusted incomes is calculated.
Combined low income and material deprivation: measures living standards of children, and refers to the inability of households to afford basic goods and activities that are seen as necessities in society.
Pensioners' material deprivation: Pensioner material deprivation is different to other measures of poverty, including the child low income and material deprivation measure. It does not only consider low income. It also captures other barriers to accessing goods and services, such as poor health, disability and social isolation.
The data source is the Department for Work and Pensions' Family Resources Survey (Households Below Average Income dataset).
Working age adults are defined as all individuals aged 16 and over but below state pension age, except unmarried 16 to 19 year-olds in full-time non-advanced education, who are considered children. Adults are defined as all working age and pensionable age adults.
For further information on the methodology used to create these statistics, please see the poverty methodology pages on gov.scot. More poverty analysis is available on the poverty pages on gov.scot.
AVAILABLE POVERTY DATASETS
Relative, absolute, and severe poverty both, before and after housing costs, broken down by:
Relative, absolute, and severe poverty, and combined low income and material deprivation both, before and after housing costs, broken down by:
Relative, absolute, and severe poverty both, before and after housing costs, broken down by:
Poverty (pensionable age adults)
Relative, absolute, and severe poverty both, before and after housing costs, and material deprivation, broken down by:
Relative, absolute, and severe poverty both, before and after housing costs. The adult population combines the working age and the pensionable age populations. Broken down by:
Relative, absolute, and severe poverty both, before and after housing costs. The single adult population contains adults who share the household with no other adults only. Broken down by:
NOTES ON COVID-19 IMPACT ON DATA
NOTES ON BREAKDOWNS
Age (children and adults datasets)
Ethnicity (all people and children datasets)
Family employment status (children and working age adults datasets)
Family type (adults dataset)
Household disability status (all people and children datasets)
Household type and gender (single adults dataset)
Marital status (adults dataset)
Religion (adults dataset)
Sexual orientation (adults dataset)
Data is not published where the estimate would be based on a sample size less than 100. These cases are marked with an asterisk.
Percentages have been rounded to 5 decimal points, and counts have been rounded to the nearest 10,000.
The United Kingdom Statistics Authority designated these statistics as National Statistics in 2012, in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
Designation can be broadly interpreted to mean that the statistics:
For further information on the methodology used to create these statistics, please see the poverty methodology pages on gov.scot.
The Family Resources Survey is a sample survey including approximately 2,700 households in Scotland. The responses of these households are weighted and grossed up to be representative of all private households in Scotland.
Coming from a sample survey, the estimates are subject to sampling error. More details about the methodology including measurement uncertainty can be found on the poverty methodology pages on gov.scot.
The estimates in this dataset can be used to identify trends over time; however, as the data is taken from a sample survey, there are confidence intervals surrounding the estimates, and year-on-year changes are unlikely to be statistically significant. Confidence intervals are published as part of the annual poverty report.
For direct comparisons across the UK please refer to the relative low income measures in the Household Below Average Incomes publication published by the Department for Work and Pensions.
For local child poverty data please refer to the Children in Low Income Families publication by the Department for Work and Pensions. The Scottish estimates in this UK-wide dataset is calibrated to the number of children in relative poverty before housing costs in Scotland.
Commentary about these estimates is available in the annual poverty report.
For further information on the methodology used to create these statistics, please see the poverty methodology pages on gov.scot.
The Family Resources Survey, on which these estimates are based, is the official source of Scotland’s poverty, household income and income inequality statistics. The estimates are used to monitor progress in reducing poverty, child poverty and income inequality.
These statistics are updated annually in March and cover the three-year period up to the previous financial year. For example, the statistics published in March 2021 cover data from the financial years 2017/18 to 2019/20.
In 2021, previously published datasets underwent a minor methodological revision to capture all income from child maintenance. This led to small changes in household income and small adjustments to some poverty estimates.
Therefore, some poverty estimates for 1994/95 to 2018/19 that were published in 2021 may not exactly match those in the previously published poverty dataset (now obsolete).
The revision did not affect any trends in poverty.
This is a linked data resource: it has a permanent unique uri at which both humans and machines can find it on the Internet, and which can be used an identifier in queries on our SPARQL endpoint.
A linked data-orientated view of dimensions and values
| Dimension | Locked Value |
|---|---|
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Age
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/age
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(not locked to a value) |
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Family Type
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/familyType
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(not locked to a value) |
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Gender
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/gender
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(not locked to a value) |
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Housing Costs
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/housingCosts
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(not locked to a value) |
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Indicator (Poverty)
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/indicator(poverty)
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(not locked to a value) |
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Marital Status
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/maritalStatus
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(not locked to a value) |
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Reference Area
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refArea
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(not locked to a value) |
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Reference Period
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refPeriod
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(not locked to a value) |
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Religion
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/religion
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(not locked to a value) |
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Sexual Orientation
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/sexualOrientation
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(not locked to a value) |
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Measure Type
http://purl.org/linked-data/cube#measureType
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(not locked to a value) |
Linked Data is stored in graphs. We keep dataset contents (the data) separately from the metadata, to make it easier for you to find exactly what you need.
The data in this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/poverty-adults
The data structure definition for this data cube dataset is stored in the same graph as the data: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/poverty-adults
All other metadata about this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/poverty-adults/metadata
A breakdown by type of the 17,451 resources in this dataset's data graph.
| Resource type | Number of resources |
|---|---|
| Collection | 2 |
| Component specification | 17 |
| Data set | 1 |
| Data structure definition | 1 |
| Observation | 17,430 |
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