Statistics

Upcoming changes to poverty and inequality statistics

December 17, 2025 by Office of the Chief Statistician No Comments | Category Social Justice

Important updates to how our poverty statistics are produced are set to take effect in the March 2026 release. This blog outlines why this is happening and what we will do to help our users understand the changes.

Why are these changes happening?

Official income statistics in Scotland are based on data from the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Family Resources Survey (FRS). This survey has been the main source of data for household income and poverty measurement with data going back to 1994-95.

Now, after years of development, DWP is linking FRS responses with administrative records on a number of benefits. This will reduce the underreporting of benefit income currently seen in the FRS data, as well as eventually reducing the burden for survey respondents and interviewers. The result of the change will mean revisions to reported poverty rates.

The development means:

• Some survey responses about benefit income will be replaced with administrative data on benefits payments.
• Households that didn’t report benefit income in the survey but are found in administrative records will now also be included, therefore improving coverage.
• Because FRS respondents have given consent to their information being linked since 2017, DWP aim to revise the statistics back to 2018-19. Due to the complexity of this work, the revisions to the back-series will be published in two stages – in March 2026 (back to 2021-22) and summer 2026 (back to 2018-19).

While data from devolved Scottish social security benefits will not be linked at this stage, DWP have taken steps to make Scotland-specific disability benefits marry up more closely to known caseloads. This is as well as implementing the agreed imputation methodology for the Scottish Child Payment.

Re-basing absolute poverty

Absolute poverty measures a household’s income against an inflation-adjusted UK median income in a reference year, currently 2010-11. Due to the structural break introduced by the data linkage, DWP have reviewed and will move the reference year from 2010-11 to the latest year for which data will be available (2024-25).  We will mirror this change in our Poverty and income inequality in Scotland publication, so statistics are comparable to the rest of the UK.

For the purposes of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, 2010-11 remains the base year for absolute poverty.  This will provide a consistent time-series to assess against the corresponding statutory target, and will be published alongside the main publication.

Supporting users through the change

We are committed to helping users understand and adapt to these changes. As such, charts and tables will clearly indicate where the series break occurs. Comparative data will also be available to show the impact of the linkage and rebasing on poverty rates.

Further changes

DWP will be carrying out the next stage of development to poverty and inequality statistics in 2027. This may result in further revisions to the poverty rates, and details can be found in the the DWP release strategy. On-going improvement work is planned over the coming years, and the release strategy will be updated as plans progress to keep users informed of the latest developments.

Change in designation of Poverty and income inequality in Scotland publication

In order to reflect these methodological changes, as well as potential revisions to the statistics over the coming years, we will be changing the designation of the upcoming Poverty and income inequality in Scotland publication from accredited official statistics to official statistics in development. This approach has been agreed with the UK Office for Statistical Regulation, and acknowledges that the data are in transition, enables clearer guidance to users on what is changing and why, and transparently signals uncertainty in the estimates and any trend comparisons, with figures subject to revision as the development work progresses. A letter from Scottish Government explaining the rationale has beeen published on the OSR website.

The change in designation will not change the way the statistics themselves are presented or used. Once the development phase is complete, we will be taking steps to have OSR re-designate the Poverty and income inequality in Scotland publication as accredited official statistics.

Changes to the hosting of the poverty publication

In addition to the changes outlined above, in March 2026, we will move our publication from data.gov.scot to the Scottish Government website. Users may notice some changes to the look and feel of the publication that will make it consistent to other Scottish Government statistical publications.

The range of statistics available will remain unchanged and users will be able to access the information they are accustomed to.  Full signposting will be available within the publication to aid clarity.

For any queries on the content of this blog, please contact us at social-justice-analysis@gov.scot.

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