Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland 2015-18

Income sources

The chart below shows the different sources of gross income by decile, ranking the population by income and dividing it into ten equal-sized groups. Income components are considered before tax; this is therefore a different definition of household income from that used elsewhere in this report.

Chart 22. Earnings and social security payments main household income sources

Higher income households receive a large proportion of income from earnings, and lower income households more of their income from social security payments.

Earnings account for around 40% of gross income for those in the first two deciles compared to over 80% for those in the top three deciles.

The proportion of household income from earnings exceeds that from social security payments for around 80% of the population (those above the 2^nd percentile point).