Local indicators of child poverty after housing costs, 2018/19. Summary of estimates of child poverty after housing costs in local authorities and parliamentary constituencies, 2014/15 – 2018/19

In March 2020, the DWP and HMRC produced an important new set of local indicators of child poverty. These provide the most reliable indicator of local child poverty to date, but have one major limitation. They estimate the percentage of children living in households with below 60% median income, but look at this only on a ‘before housing costs’ (BHC) basis. That is to say, they take no account of the fact that comparing incomes for households in different parts of the country where housing costs vary does not produce a like for like comparison of disposable incomes. As a result, the figures greatly understate the impact of low income in areas such as London with high housing costs.

This paper and accompanying data use the DWP/HMRC local indicators combined with information about housing costs at the local level to estimate poverty rates after housing costs (AHC) - i.e. how many are children are in households with incomes net of housing costs that are below 60% of the median. It makes estimates local authorities and parliamentary constituencies for each of five years from 2014/15 to 2018/19. Note that the total number of children in poverty shown here only includes those aged under 16, and is therefore lower than in the main poverty statistics, which also includes 16-19 year olds in full-time secondary education.