Indicator
Relationship between poverty, age and health
Published
24 July 2024
Last updated
25 July 2025
Time to read
About 2 mins
About 2 mins
Key points
- People in poverty are more likely to be in ‘less than good’ health (fair, bad or very bad) than people who are not in poverty at all ages.
- The difference in the share of people who report their health as less than good (between people in poverty and people not in poverty) is largest for people aged 35 to 64 years.
Poverty can affect someone’s health when financial resources are insufficient to meet their basic living needs, such as adequate heating for the home, appropriate clothing or adequate nutrition.
The chart shows the proportion of people who report their health as less than good (on a scale of ‘very good’, ‘good’, ‘fair’, ‘bad’ and ‘very bad’) by age and whether they live in poverty.
- At all ages, the proportion of people in poverty whose health is ‘less than good’ is higher than for people who are not in poverty, revealing a clear gap.
- At age 16–24 years the difference is 6 percentage points. At 25–34 years it is 9 percentage points.
- At ages 35–44 the difference rises to 16 points, and it is 15 points for people aged 45–55 and 14 points for those aged 55–64 years.
- At age 65 years and older, the two groups are more similar, with just 5 percentage points between them.
This gap remains even if we only look at people in work, which means the effect is not just a result of people with poor health being in poverty because their health prevents them from working.
- Years shown are 3-year pooled averages to maximise sample sizes. For example 2023/24 is a 3-year pooling of 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24.
- Poverty is defined as someone living in a household with a net household income below 60% of that year’s median.
- Income is equivalised, which means it is adjusted for household size to reflect economies of scale: for example, a household of four needs more income for the same standard of living as a household of one, but not four times as much.
- Housing costs are deducted from income, to reflect that people with lower incomes in particular have fewer options for meeting their housing costs, relative to their income.
- Self-rated health is measured on a five-point scale from ‘very good’ to ‘very bad’. Other options include ‘good’, ‘fair’ and ‘bad’.
Source: Department for Work and Pensions, Households Below Average Income and the Family Resources Survey, UK, 1994/95 to 2023/24
