What does poverty mean? The UK poverty line explained

The UK poverty line is 60% of the typical household income in the UK, counted after rent or mortgage is paid. In 2024/25 that meant £212 a week for a single adult and £519 a week for a couple with two young children, left over for everything except housing.

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.

What is poverty? The UK definition of poverty

In everyday language, poverty means not having enough money to cover the basics and take part in ordinary life: a warm home, enough food, clothes that fit, a bus fare, a school trip.

The official UK measure turns that into a test. A household is counted as being in poverty when it has less than 60% of what a typical household in the UK has to live on, once rent or mortgage is paid. “Typical” here means the median, the household in the middle if you lined everyone up from lowest income to highest.

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. It is not a test of whether people are starving.

What is the UK poverty line?

Percentages are hard to picture, so here is the same line in pounds a week. This is the money left after housing costs in 2024/25, the latest year published. A household with less than this is below the UK poverty line.

That money has to cover 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.

Bigger households need more, but not double. The official method assumes a second adult or an older child adds to costs, while some costs, like a cooker or a fridge, are shared. Children aged 14 and over count for more than younger children, so the line is higher for a family with teenagers.

UK poverty line for a single person

For one adult living alone the line was £212 a week in 2024/25, about £11,024 a year, after tax and after housing costs. The same figure applies to a single pensioner.

For what a wage actually leaves you with, the take home pay calculator works it out, and pages like £20,000 after tax in Scotland show the sums for common salaries.

Am I below the poverty line?

You can check it roughly in four steps.

• •Add up what comes in each week. Wages after tax and National Insurance, plus benefits such as Universal Credit, Child Benefit and the Scottish Child Payment, plus any pension.
• •Take off council tax. The official measure counts income after council tax.
• •Take off your housing costs. That means rent (before any housing benefit), water charges, and for owners the interest part of the mortgage. In Scotland water charges come on your council tax bill, see water rates in Scotland.
• •Compare what is left with the line for a household like yours in the table above.

If you are close to or under the line, check what you are entitled to. The benefits guide covers the main Scottish and UK payments, Council Tax Reduction can cut your bill, and a Crisis Grant can help in an emergency.

Before and after housing costs

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.

The choice changes the answer. Across the UK in 2024/25, 16% of people were in relative poverty before housing costs and 20% after. Housing costs push hardest on renters and families with children.

Relative poverty and absolute poverty in the UK

Three words get used, and they measure different things.

• •Relative poverty is the main headline measure. When people say “the poverty line”, this is usually what they mean.
• •Absolute poverty holds the line still and only adjusts it for prices. If absolute poverty falls, people at the bottom really are better off than they were.
• •Persistent poverty does the most damage, because short spells can be recovered from and long ones cannot. Families run out of savings and things to sell.

Poverty in the UK and Scotland: the latest figures

Across the UK, 20% of people were below the poverty line after housing costs in 2024/25, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. For children it was 27%.

In Scotland, 17% of people, 940,000 of them, were below the same line on average over 2022 to 2025. For children it was 21%.

Those are national figures. The number where you live can be very different, and in some places it is far worse. The poverty in Scotland page has the full picture, and the causes of poverty guide explains why some families fall below the line.

Using the poverty line in Modern Studies

Poverty comes up in the social inequality part of National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher Modern Studies. Markers want the right word, a figure, and where the figure came from.

A paragraph you could write

Point: poverty in Scotland is lower than in the UK as a whole. Evidence: 17% of people in Scotland were in relative poverty after housing costs over 2022 to 2025 (Scottish Government), against 20% across the UK in 2024/25 (Department for Work and Pensions). Explain: one reason is lower housing costs for many families, because Scotland has more social housing. Evaluate: the Scottish figure is a three year average and the UK one is a single year, so the gap should be read as a rough guide.

For more, see Modern Studies resources, the National 5 Modern Studies revision notes and model answers, the Higher Modern Studies evidence for each section, and the six question poverty quiz.

The full definitions are in the plain English glossary, and the exact method is on the methods page.