Child Poverty Priority Groups
As part of plans to reduce child poverty, the Scottish Government has set out 6 priority groups. These households are at greater risk of child poverty for a variety of reasons and plans to reduce child poverty must consider how they will impact each group. This section of the website includes data on each of the groups, although comprehensive and comparable data is not available for all groups.
It is also important to note that these are not distinct categories and many families will be in two or more of these high-risk groups. The groups are: families with a child under 1 year old (families with young children); families with a mother under the age of 25 (young mothers); families which include a disabled person (disabled households); families which include a person from an ethnic minority (ethnic minority households); lone parents; and families with more than three children (large families).
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The chart above shows the rates of relative poverty in the priority groups for which figures are available between 2011-14 and 2019-22. All priority groups for whom a figure was available had higher rates of child poverty than the Scottish average for all children. These estimates are calculated only at the Scotland level and not every group has an estimate for every point in time.
The group with the highest levels of child poverty between 2011-2014 and 2015-2018 was mothers under 25 years of age (young mothers). More recent estimates are not available for this group. In the most recent estimate, relative poverty was highest for minority ethnic households, with 39% of children in these households experiencing poverty.
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In 2019-22, the rate of material deprivation was highest among lone parent families with 23% of these families experiencing material deprivation compared to 11% of all Scottish children.
Notes
These data come from Scottish Government statistics. These pages were last updated in April 2023. They will be updated again when figures are next released.
