Persistent poverty in Scotland 2010-2024
Estimates of the proportion of people living in persistent poverty in Scotland between 2010 and 2024.
What you need to know
Poverty can be measured in a number of different ways, each of which can tell us something different about poverty. One of the most common measures is relative (income) poverty which identifies people living in households with an equivalised income below 60% of the UK median household income. Relative poverty statistics fall if income growth at the lower end of the income distribution is greater than overall income growth. Statistics on relative poverty rates in Scotland can be found in the Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland report, based on the data collected in the Family Resource Survey (FRS) by the Department for Works and Pension (DWP). This survey does not track individuals or households over time and so cannot be used to calculate persistent poverty rates.
The estimates in this publication are derived from the Understanding Society survey. Understanding Society is a UK-wide longitudinal survey that captures information about people’s social and economic circumstances, attitudes, behaviours and health. Being longitudinal, the same individuals are interviewed each year allowing identification of those who have been in poverty over a number of years. This is a different data collection from the Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland report, they use different income definitions and cover different time periods so they cannot be compared directly.
Longitudinal panel surveys are prone to attrition over time, as individuals and/or households stop participating. This results in smaller sample sizes. Maintaining representativeness is also challenging in these types of survey. Even if a panel survey is representative of the population at the point of sampling, its design means it cannot, over time, reflect the effect of immigration on that population. These factors mean that confidence in survey estimates tends to reduce with successive waves.
University of Essex introduced a sample boost in Wave 14 (2022 and 2023), in order to address the effects of attrition and migration, and to improve the coverage of other minority samples. The introduction of the boost means that statistics involving survey data from 2022 and 2023 onwards are not fully comparable to those preceding them.
Poverty estimates in this publication are derived by looking at household income before housing costs (BHC) and after housing costs (AHC). In Scotland, after housing costs poverty indicators are more commonly used.
Some persistent poverty estimates from previous years have been improved and will therefore differ between publications. Estimates get routinely revised when households re-enter the longitudinal sample and past data gaps can be filled. The latest publication provides the most accurate estimates.
The statistics presented below are from a sample survey and are therefore subject to a degree of uncertainty. This means that observed changes over the years and between countries need to be interpreted with caution. More information can be found in the Data source section.