Tackling child poverty priority families overview

Progress towards child poverty targets

The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 sets statutory targets to reduce levels of child poverty, including fewer than 10% of children living in relative poverty, by 2030. This means fewer than one in ten children living in households on low incomes, compared to the average UK household.

Child poverty rates are stable across all four measures. Caution to be taken when looking at trends while data developments are still ongoing. 

Poverty trends show a stable picture of poverty over time.  Wider external factors over the past decade have made progress particularly challenging (economic legacy of Brexit, Covid-19, the cost of living crisis).  Still, wider evidence suggests that policies are helping families across the three drivers of poverty reduction.

Specifically:

• Increasing income through employment can help families avoid poverty.  While the economy, in overall terms, appeared to be performing relatively strongly over the past year (relative to the previous five years), the impact of this for low-income households is mixed. For example, we see hourly pay increasing, but number of hours worked decreasing. Employability policies are supporting an increasing number of parents (with around a third entering employment as a result of the support provided) but barriers remain in terms of scale.
• Reducing cost of living.  Following a period of peak inflation during 2022, the reduced rate seems to have allowed low income families some respite. Overall, there seems to be an improvement in the financial resilience of families (more families managing well financial and able to save). But substantial struggles still in terms of fuel poverty and food insecurity.
• Income from social security.  We see uptake increasing further and clear positive impact of social security and benefits in-kind on families.