Core indicator
Poverty
Children in households in absolute poverty
Last updated March 2023
(March 2023)
Last reviewed: July 2024
Why are we looking at poverty and how are we measuring it?
Poverty is widely perceived as a key cause of violence affecting children and is an important contextual factor for us to consider in our work. We’ll be publishing an evidence review estimating the extent of the effect later this year.
There is no agreed single measure of poverty. As our core measure, we’ve used the proportion of children in households in absolute poverty after housing costs. Absolute poverty is defined as the share of individuals whose household income (adjusted for inflation) is below 60% of the median income in 2010. This gives us a measure of how much the poorest households earn.
What does our core indicator show?
Overall, this measure shows a mixed picture. Over the past decade, absolute poverty has broadly been falling. However, the latest year has shown an increase. In 2022/23, 25% of children in the UK were living in households in absolute poverty – equivalent to 3.6 million children. This is down from 29% in 2012/13, but up compared to 23% the previous year (2021/22) and in line with the 25% rate in the year before Covid-19 (2019/20). Other measures, such as relative poverty (which measures how much poorer houses earn relative to middle earners), show a consistently worsening picture. Housing, particularly for the poorest families, is a growing problem, with the proportion of households in temporary accommodation at record highs.