Local indicators of child poverty after housing costs, 2021/22

This report summarises the latest data on local child poverty after housing costs, produced for the End Child Poverty Coalition by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. The data are for the year ending March 2022. The data do not, therefore, cover the period during which the cost-of-living crisis really took hold, nor the period of extremely high and rising inflation that has been particularly prominent in relation to the costs of food and fuel. The data also have yet to reflect the full impact of the Scottish Child Payment.0F1 However, the period does include a six-month extension to the £20 per week increase the standard allowance of Universal Credit (UC) provided by the Government in response the Covid-19 pandemic. This uplift, amounting to just over £1,000 additional income per year for households in receipt of UC, was removed in October 2021. This measure is likely to have pushed down poverty rates for families during this period. Nevertheless, rates remain high across the UK, with regions in the North of England and the Midlands faring particularly badly based on this year’s estimates. Figure 1 shows overall rates of child poverty in the regions and countries of the UK in 2021/22.

These regional statistics derived from the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data released annually by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are considered the official poverty statistics for the UK. They are usually based on three-year averages, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, collection of household-level data via cross-sectional surveys such as the Family Resources Survey (on which the official poverty statistics are based) became more problematic, and the 2020/21 survey included only around half the usual sample. The single-year regional estimates for 2020/21 were therefore considered less reliable than usual, so the regional statistics for 2021/22 exclude these data and instead use the two-year average of 2019/20 and 2021/22.