Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031 – annex 5: Cumulative Impact Assessment
This report is an annex to Bringing Hope, Building Futures: the third tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026 to 2031 and assesses the cumulative impact of a package of our policies on child poverty.
9. Footnotes
1 Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022-2026 - annex 4: cumulative impact assessment - gov.scot
3 Child poverty cumulative impact assessment: update - gov.scot
4 Child poverty modelling: update - gov.scot
5 Statistics Upcoming changes to poverty and inequality statistics - Statistics
6 Family Resources Survey: background information and methodology - GOV.UK
7 The Department for Work and Pensions is changing the reference base year for absolute poverty to 2024-2025. For the purposes of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, 2010-11 remains the base year for absolute poverty as set out in the upcoming changes to the poverty and inequality statistics note.
8 Disability benefits and carer support take-up changes were excluded due to the inability to identify disabled or carer eligibility from the dataset. All other modelled social security had their take-up rates set to 100% to represent a maximum take-up of available benefits, which was added to the baseline scenario with the Scottish Government policy package. Eligibility for social security was identified by the characterises and reported income of the households in the survey.
9 Even this method does not take into account the unevenness of the income distribution, since the poverty lines are set as fixed percentages of the median rather than on a quantile basis. All else equal, larger impacts will tend to be observed if children are clustered around the poverty line in question, which tends to be the case for the relative poverty.
10 For example the Child poverty pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow evaluation found that the programme supported families address immediate crises and supported them to shift towards longer-term or underlying issues. The recent evaluation of the Five Family Payments also indicated that participants have enabled recipients to borrow less frequently, pay off debts, and save for unexpected costs. Additionally, the recent Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund evaluation noted improvements in referral pathways, multi-agency collaboration, and streamlined access to financial and social support.
11 See Benefit cap: Benefits affected by the cap - GOV.UK for a list of benefits that are subject to the cap in addition to the conditions under which households are exempt.
12 2026 to 2027 - Local Housing Allowance Rates - gov.scot
13 There are four categories of exception: 1) additional children in a multiple birth (e.g. twins), where an extra amount will be payable for all children in a multiple birth other than the first child; 2) children who are likely to have been born as a result of non-consensual conception, including rape or where the claimant was in a controlling or coercive relationship with the child’s other biological parent at the time of conception; 3) children who are adopted when they would otherwise be in local authority care; and 4) children who are in non-parental caring arrangements when they would otherwise be at risk of entering the care system, including where a child (under 16) has a child.
14 Welfare reform - impact on households with children: report - gov.scot
16 Data on Fair Start Scotland have been used for this analysis owing to the relative maturity of the evidence base, and because the data are classed as Official Statistics. Statistics for No One Left Behind are currently classed as Official Statistics in Development, and subject to ongoing improvement. The methodology underpinning No One Left Behind progression data has recently been subject to a thorough review, which identified challenges for employment sustainment data arising from follow-on collection methodologies. The Scottish Government are working closely with data providers to improve the quality of this data. We anticipate that future analysis will be based on No One Left Behind progression data, once data quality is sufficient to support this. Further information on the progression methodology review and recent developments are available at: Scotland's Devolved Employment Services: Review of Employment Progression Methodology - gov.scot
17 School meal uptake - School meal uptake: 2023-24 - gov.scot
18 Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland 2021-24
19 Goedeme, T et al., 2013, Testing the Statistical Significance of Microsimulation Results: A Plea, International Journal of Microsimulation 6(3), 50-77.
Contact
Email: TCPU@gov.scot