What does poverty actually mean in the UK?
The word gets used loosely. The measure behind it is precise, and knowing it makes every other number on this site readable.
By Graeme · 31 July 2026 · 5 min read
On this page
When a report says a million people are in poverty, it is not a figure of speech. There is an exact test behind it. Once you know the test, every other number on this site becomes readable.
The short version
A household is counted as being in poverty when it has less than 60% of what a normal household in the UK has to live on, once rent or mortgage is paid.
That is it. It is a comparison. It asks whether a family has fallen a long way behind what is normal in the country they live in.
What that is in real money
Percentages are hard to picture, so here is the same line in pounds per week. This is the money left in 2022/23. Below these figures, a household counted as being in poverty:
A couple with two young children needed more than
£407 a week
A single parent with one small child needed more than
£224 a week
A single adult needed more than
£166 a week
That is for everything that is not rent: food, gas, electricity, travel, school shoes, a birthday. If a family has less than that, they are in poverty by the official measure.
Why “after housing costs” matters so much
You will see two versions of poverty figures, before housing costs and after. This site uses after, and so does the Scottish Government headline.
The reason is simple. Rent is not optional and it is not the same everywhere. Two families on identical wages are not equally well off if one hands over £700 a month and the other £300. Counting the money that is actually left is closer to how life works.
One thing worth knowing
Because the line moves with what is normal, relative poverty can fall in a bad year — if everyone's income drops together, the line drops too. That is why serious reporting reads it alongside other measures, and why I show ten years rather than one.
Relative, absolute and persistent
Three words get used, and they measure different things.
- — falling a long way behind what is normal today. This is the main headline measure.
- Absolute poverty — measured against a line fixed at a past year and uprated for prices. It asks whether living standards themselves are improving.
- — being in poverty for several of the last few years. This is the one that does the most damage, because short spells can be recovered from and long ones cannot.
Where Scotland stands
On the main measure, 17% of people in Scotland — 940,000 of them — were below that line in 2022–25. For children it is 21%.
Those are national figures. The number where you live can be very different, and in some places it is far worse.
See the figure for your own area
Every council area and every MP area in Scotland has its own page, with ten years of figures and the source underneath.
Find my areaThe full definitions are in the plain-English glossary, and the exact method is on the methods page.
