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Poverty in Scotland 2025

This year’s Poverty in Scotland report from Joseph Rowntree Foundation is published in the context of people feeling overlooked and ignored by politicians. It is a context in which the economy is not working and in which low-paid, insecure work is entangled with high costs.

It is time for trust to be rebuilt in our political institutions. With nearly a quarter of a million children still experiencing poverty in Scotland, there is no better place to start than building a better future for every child.

This report shows the results of today’s failures. Nearly one in four children are living in poverty, and poverty rates amongst the Scottish Government’s so-called priority families remain particularly high. While there are signs of hope, in terms of the impact of the Scottish Child Payment (SCP), there is much more to do.

JRF have also, for the first time, incorporated analysis of child poverty in Scotland’s local authorities. This is a crucial insight for politicians who seek to represent these areas in Holyrood or in the local government elections that follow in 2027. As has been the case for some time, much of the central belt, and Glasgow in particular, has the most work to do. Nevertheless, there are glimmers of hope in that the vast majority of local authority areas have seen a fall in child poverty rates, again thanks to the SCP.

The report also confirms some of the endemic features of poverty in Scotland. The latest data tells us:

  1. Poverty is deepening: nearly 1 in 10 people in Scotland are in very deep poverty with incomes below 40% of the median (the standard poverty line is below 60%).
  2. In-work poverty is increasingly more common: 6 in 10 people in poverty live in a household where someone works and nearly three-quarters of children in poverty do.
  3. Poverty amongst disabled people remains high: when disability benefits are excluded from the income of households where someone is disabled, the poverty rate for people in a family where someone is in receipt of a disability benefit is 38%. Over half of all children in poverty live in a household where someone is disabled.
  4. Universal Credit (UC) rates are too low to escape poverty: 42% of people in a family in receipt of a low-income benefit, such as UC, were trapped in poverty.
  5. Housing costs are causing poverty, particularly for renters: 1 in 10 people in rented accommodation (private or social rents) are pulled into poverty due to their housing costs.

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