Tackling child poverty delivery plan: forecasting child poverty in Scotland

ISBN 978 1 78851 732 4 (web only publication)
PPDAS 386666

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Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Outline of the report
1.2 The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017
1.3 The Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016
1.4 Reductions in the generosity of social security payments
1.5 Universal Credit
1.6 Devolved Social Security Powers
1.7 Devolved Income Tax Powers
1.8 Trends in population and employment
Demographics
The Economy

Chapter 2. Methodology
2.1 Microsimulation of household net incomes
2.2 Survey data
The Family Resources Survey (FRS)
Understanding Society
2.3 Reweighting and uprating the data
2.4 Forecasting the child poverty measures
Measure 1: relative child poverty
Measure 2: absolute child poverty
Measure 3: combined low income and material deprivation
Measure 4: persistent child poverty
2.5 Policy scenarios
Scenario (a): uprating only
Scenario (b): Westminster reforms
Scenario (c): Westminster plus Scotland reforms
2.6 Robustness analysis
Variant scenarios
Comparison with IFS results

Chapter 3. Results
3.1 Headline child poverty measures
3.2 The impact of UK and Scottish Government policies on child poverty: scenario
comparisons
The role of the Scottish tax and social security reforms in explaining trends in
forecast child poverty
3.3 Confidence intervals for measures 3 and 4
3.4 Child poverty by family composition, number of children and employment status
Lone parents and couples with children
Number of children in household
Employment Status
3.5 Robustness analysis
Varying population growth assumptions
Varying employment growth assumptions
Varying wage growth assumptions
Other robustness checks
Comparison with IFS findings
Summary of results of robustness analysis

Chapter 4. Conclusions

References

Appendix 1. Reweighting the Family Resources Survey: Sources and Methods
Reweighting
Forecast Data Sources
Population Forecasts
Household Composition
Employment and Unemployment
An Example
2016 - Based Scottish Projections
Final Weighting Target List

Appendix 2: The IPPR/Resolution Foundation/Landman Economics tax-transfer model
Overview
Data and Outputs
Reforms modelled
Modelling partial take-up
The take-up algorithm
Take-up of Universal Credit
Simulating changes in child poverty rates

Appendix 3. Movements into and out of poverty as a result of the planned Scottish reforms

Appendix 4. Robustness analysis results for child poverty measure 2 (absolute poverty)