Tackling child poverty - progress report 2024-2025: annex C - decomposition analysis of the child poverty statistics

3. Summary

The small decrease in relative child poverty after housing costs seen between 2015-18 and 2021-24 masked some notable changes for child poverty subgroups suggesting some structural changes in Scotland.

• In terms of housing tenure, relative child poverty rates after housing costs increased for social renters, contrasting with a decrease for private renters and homeowners. However, this appears to be largely driven by income factors, with the difference in child poverty before and after housing costs for the groups indicating that social housing continues to provide protection relative to renting privately.
• Child poverty rates for two-adult households were stable. However, there was a drop in child poverty rates amongst lone parent families.
• Child poverty rates by working status diverged over the period for families in ‘mixed work’ and those with ‘none working’. Child poverty rates for families in the ‘mixed work’ group saw an increase, while the rates decreased for those in the ‘none working’ group. Notably, the composition of families shifted towards full-time work and away from mixed or no work helping to drive down the overall child poverty rate.
• Child poverty rates for families with two children and those with three or more children saw large divergences, with decreasing child poverty for families with less than three children, compared with increases in families with three or more children. This could be due to policies such as the two child benefit limit which was applied to families with children born after April 2017.

This suggests that while overall poverty rates have changed only slightly since 2015-18, we have observed changes, both in the share different groups at greater risk of poverty have in the population, and the rate of poverty individual groups experience.