Child poverty cumulative impact assessment: update

2. Introduction

In March 2022, the Scottish Government published a Cumulative Impact Assessment (CIA) to accompany the second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, Best Start, Bright Futures.^[1] The CIA set out projections for relative and absolute child poverty in 2023-24 and 2025-26, in addition to the estimated impact of Scottish Government policies, using the latest information available at the time. An update of the headline results accompanied the Tackling Child Poverty Progress Report in June 2023, extending the modelling to 2026-27.^[2]

This note presents the latest modelling of relative and absolute child poverty, including estimates for 2024-25. The update includes the latest economic forecasts published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in November 2023; the latest UK and Scottish Government policy announcements, including the UK Autumn Statement and the Scottish Government Budget as published on 19 December 2023; and the latest household survey information, including an additional year of data (2021-22) from the Family Resources Survey. In addition, we present new analysis on deep poverty and on UK Government welfare reform.

The original CIA sets out the full details of our methodology. As in previous modelling, we run two scenarios in each year: a policy scenario, which represents our projection, and a counterfactual scenario, which represents a hypothetical world in which a package of Scottish Government policies did not exist. The difference between the two scenarios represents the impact of these policies. The same policies are included in the policy package as in the original CIA, along with any changes to these policies that have been announced or implemented in the interim.^[3]