Poverty in the UK: statistics

How is poverty measured?

The focus in this briefing is on poverty defined in terms of disposable household income (income after adding benefits and deducting direct taxes). However, poverty may be defined in different ways and there is no single, universally accepted definition.

Two commonly used measures of poverty based on disposable income are:

• Relative low income: This refers to people living in households with income below 60% of the median in that year.
• Absolute low income: This refers to people living in households with income below 60% of median income in a base year, usually 2010/11. This measurement is adjusted for inflation

Median income is the point at which half of households have lower income and half have higher income.

Income can be measured before or after housing costs are deducted.

How many people are in poverty?

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data shows that around 17% people in the UK were in relative low income (relative poverty) before housing costs in 2023/24. This rises to 21% once housing costs are accounted for.

Source: DWP, Households Below Average Income, 2023/24

15% of people in the UK were in absolute low income before housing costs in 2023/24, and 18% were in absolute low income (absolute poverty) after housing costs.

Source: DWP, Households Below Average Income, 2023/24

Over the longer-term, poverty rates have reduced since the late 1990s for children, pensioners, and working-age parents. However, for working-age adults without dependent children the likelihood of being in relative low income has increased.

Poverty is set to increase

The Resolution Foundation, a living standards think tank, predicted in August 2024 that if there was no change to economic forecasts or policies from the 2024 election, an extra 1.5 million people including 400,000 children would be in relative poverty after housing costs in 2029/30, from a rate for all individuals of 22% in 2024/25 to 23% in 2029/30.

The DWP modelled the effect of the changes made to benefits in March 2025, including changes to PIP entitlements, Universal Credit Health and Work Capability Assessment and found that these changes mean an additional 250,000 people in relative poverty after housing costs in 2029/30, compared to a scenario where these changes were not made.

The government formed a Child Poverty Taskforce in August 2024, which will publish a strategy in Spring 2025, “to reduce and alleviate child poverty”.

Some groups are more likely to be in poverty

The following groups had the highest rates of relative poverty after housing costs in 2023/24:

• Working-age adults (43%) and children (62%) living in a family where nobody was in work,
• People in social rented (40%) and private rented (37%) accommodation,
• Children in families with three or more children (44%),
• People in families where someone is disabled (28%),
• People in Bangladeshi (53%) and Pakistani (47%) households.

Other ways of thinking about poverty

There is debate about whether income is the best way to measure poverty. The Social Metrics Commission (SMC) proposed basing the measure on the extent that someone’s resources meet their needs. This accounts for differences among households such as costs of childcare and disability, savings, and access to assets. The DWP have developed a new measure called Below Average Resources (BAR), using the framework suggested by the SMC.

A research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a poverty charity, estimates a Minimum Income Standard: the level of income needed to meet a minimum acceptable standard of living each year.

Measures like material deprivation and destitution provide an insight into how many people are unable to afford essentials.