Persistent Poverty in Scotland 2010-2015

About this publication

This publication presents new estimates of the percentage of people, children, working age adults and pensioners living in persistent poverty in Scotland. The estimates are used to monitor progress in reducing poverty. As this is the first time these figures have been produced they have been published as ' experimental statistics' which means that they are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed. This reflects the fact that it is the first time these statistics have been published using this source and improvements are planned to the derivation of key variables for future releases.

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 poverty which identifies people living in households with an equivalised income below 60 per cent of the UK median household income. Statistics on relative poverty in Scotland can be found on the Scottish Government website: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/IncomePoverty.

Persistent poverty identifies the number of individuals living in relative poverty for 3 or more of the last 4 years. It therefore identifies people who have been living in poverty for a significant period of time, the rationale being that this is more damaging than brief periods spent with a low income, with the impacts affecting an individual through their lifetime.

The publication presents persistent poverty rates for 2 overlapping periods: 2010-2011 to 2013-2014 (referred to as 2010-2014) and 2011-2012 to 2014-2015 (referred to as 2011-2015). More information can be found in Annex 2.