Listen
Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland 2007-08
07/05/2009
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland: 2007-08 containing key statistics on the number of children, working age adults and pensioners in low-income poverty.
The main findings are:
- Overall, levels of poverty and income inequality have remained fairly stable between 2004-05 and 2007-08
- Between 2006-07 and 2007-08 the proportion of individuals in relative poverty in Scotland remained at 17 per cent of the population
- The proportion of children in relative poverty fell from 21 to 20 per cent of children in Scotland
- The proportion of pensioners in relative poverty increased from 20 to 21 per cent of pensioners
- The proportion of Working Age Adults in relative poverty increased from 14 to 15 per cent of working age adults
- Between 2006-07 and 2007-08 the proportion of total income received by those in the bottom three income deciles fell from 14 to 13 per cent
- The year-on-year changes highlighted above are all within the margins of sampling error for the survey upon which they are based
Relative poverty is defined as having net income, adjusted for household size and composition, of less than 60 per cent of the UK median.