Trends in poverty
About 2 mins
Key points
- Almost one fifth of the UK population live in poverty – equivalent to 13.4 million people.
- Before the pandemic, in 2019/20, poverty rates for children and pensioners rose to their highest since around the 2008/09 financial crisis. For working-age adults, rates have remained constant since around the financial crisis, reflecting how incomes both increased due to higher employment and decreased due to social security cuts.
- Children consistently experience the highest levels of poverty – in 2024/25, over one quarter of children lived in poverty.
Poverty can affect health when financial resources are insufficient to meet basic living needs, such as adequate heating for the home, appropriate clothing or adequate nutrition.
The chart shows the percentage of people living in poverty in the UK for each year from 1994/95 to 2024/25. Data is separated into the following groups: all people, children, working-age adults and pensioners.
A total of 19.6% of the UK population – around 13.4 million people – live in poverty, a figure that has changed little since the mid-2000s.
The relatively static overall (all people) measure hides considerable variation between age groups:
- Child poverty fell from 33.7% to 28.1% between 1998/99 and 2004/05, which can be seen as a result of social policy success, such as Child Tax Credit. The child poverty rate has remained at around 30% since 2005/06 with a fall in 2010/11 – largely due to median income falling after the financial crisis – before rising pre-pandemic. Latest data suggest child poverty has been relatively stable since 2021/22 at around 28%.
- The percentage of working-age people in poverty has remained broadly consistent over the past three decades, at around 1 in 5 (18.6% in 2024/25).
- The poverty rate for pensioners more than halved between the late 1990s and its low point (13.3%) in 2012/13. Although it crept up to 18.1% in 2019/20. The most recent data show the rate falling from 15% in 2021/22 to 12.3% in 2023/24 and starting to rise again in 2024/25. The reduction in pensioner poverty up until 2012/13 was partly due to the introduction of more generous financial support through Pension Credit.
Within each group, the composition of the population in poverty has shifted. For people of working age and with children, this includes the growth of in-work poverty (people in work and still in poverty) and a shift towards more families privately renting (where housing costs are higher). There have been similar shifts for working-age adults.
- The data presented here are weighted estimates from the Family Resources Survey published by the Department of Work and Pensions.
- Poverty is defined as an individual living in a household with a net household income below 60% of the median in that year.
- Income is defined as monthly net equivalised household income after housing costs. 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.
- Pensioners are defined as individuals above State Pension age at the time of interview; working-age adults are individuals below State Pension age who are over 16, not in further education and not classed as a dependent child; children are dependents under the age of 16 years or aged 16 to 19 and in school or non-advanced further education, not married, and living with a parent.
- The category ‘pensioner’ is the technical term used in the statistics produced by the Department for Work and Pensions. ‘Pensioner’ is not our preferred wording at the Health Foundation but is accurate to use in this context.
- Northern Ireland data are only included in the survey from 2002/03 onwards.
- Data from 2020/21 and 2021/22 were impacted by COVID-19. These years should be treated with caution particularly if comparing with previous years.
- From 2021/22 onwards, administrative benefit data has been integrated with the Family Resources Survey instead of using survey benefit data. Data before and after 2021/22 are not directly comparable.
