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Publication - Research and analysis

Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: Progress Report 2025-26. Annex A: Child Poverty Measurement Framework

Published
18 June 2026
From
Director for Children and Families, +5 more … Director for Lifelong Learning and Skills, Director of Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights, Director of Jobs and Wellbeing Economy, Director of Tackling Child Poverty and Social Justice, Director-General Communities and External Affairs
Directorate
Tackling Child Poverty and Social Justice Directorate, +8 more … Children and Families Directorate, Early Learning and Childcare Directorate, Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights Directorate, Jobs and Wellbeing Economy Directorate, Learning Directorate, Lifelong Learning and Skills Directorate, Local Government and Housing Directorate, Social Security Directorate
Topic
Children and families, Communities and third sector, Cost of living crisis, +5 more … Economy, Education, Equality and rights, Housing, Work and skills
ISBN
9781807753139

Child poverty measurement framework with the latest data on the drivers of child poverty. The indicators in the child poverty measurement framework are intended to monitor these drivers of poverty.

View supporting documents Supporting documents

Introduction

The drivers of poverty are summarised in the diagram below. These are: income from employment, costs of living and income from social security and benefits in-kind.

Figure 1: Drivers of child poverty

flowchart illustrating the links between the measurement framework indicators and the drivers of poverty. The drivers are income from employment, the cost of living and income from social security and benefits in kind.

The indicators included in the child poverty measurement framework have been selected to track progress over time across the drivers of poverty reduction. The child poverty measurement framework is purposely focused on actions that have a clear link to poverty reduction, by impacting on families’ incomes.

In preparing for the new Tackling Child Poverty Plan, Bringing Hope, Building Futures we undertook a review of the child poverty measurement framework. This highlighted that, as this is the final Delivery Plan towards the 2030 targets, it is important to assess any potential long term impact of the Plan and repercussions on progress achieved.

The original logic model (see Figure 2), already included a range of long term consequences of poverty. While we are keeping the measurement framework focused on the three drivers of poverty, we are now including an additional element that allows us to track progress on the long term consequences of poverty/poverty reduction and these are included as an additional chapter in this publication.

While this is the final child poverty measurement framework of the previous Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, Best Start Bright Futures, it was considered that moving to the new version of the measurement framework would provide a baseline for the new indicators prior to the implementation of the final plan.

Figure 2: Child Poverty Theory of Change

Theory of change for child poverty actions to tackle the three drivers of poverty reduction, which are labelled as Outputs and include: increase income from employment, reduce costs of living and increase income from social security and benefits in kind. The drivers directly impact on the four child poverty targets. This in turn to mitigate the consequences of being in poverty. External factors are also to be considered. These are factors for which Scottish Government does not have any control over.

This annex sets out the trends over time for each of the child poverty measurement framework indicators. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on the data collection of many national surveys, some indicators show a data gap for all or some of the years 2020-2022. Where the data is available and can be trusted to be reliable and robust, new data and trends have been added.

Poverty statistics based on data collected through the Family Resources Survey (FRS) have been subject to data linkage with DWP data in 2026. This has led to some estimates for the 2019-22 data being suppressed in the most recent update and this will appear as a break in the series in the charts affected.

Some of the indicators come from the Annual Population Survey (APS). Due to the falling sample sizes in recent years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have stated that although APS estimates are robust at National and headline regional level, there are concerns with the quality of estimates for smaller groups of the population, such as estimates for parents of dependent children. It is still appropriate to use the APS estimates included here. However, users are advised to note the increased uncertainty around the estimates in recent years. The increased uncertainty around the estimates can be assessed using the 95% confidence intervals provided. Shaded areas represent 95% confidence intervals around the estimates.

A summary assessment of what the indicators mean is included in the main progress report.

Contact

Email: TCPU@gov.scot

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