Material deprivation and low income: April 2019 to March 2020

Material deprivation is a measure of living standards. We define a person to be living in material deprivation if he or she is not able to access a certain number of goods and services.

DWP use the Family Resources Survey to publish statistics about children and pensioners in material deprivation in their Households Below Average Income report, broken down for UK countries and regions of England.

Main findings

14% of children living in Wales between 2017-18 and 2019-20 were in material deprivation and low income households. Low income households are those that had a total household income below 70% of the UK average household income, before housing costs were paid. This is up slightly from the 11% reported last year. The corresponding rate is 12% for England, 11% for Scotland and 7% for Northern Ireland. This is a 3 percentage point increase from that reported last year. However, please take care when comparing data over time because trends can be volatile due to small sample sizes for Wales.

7% of pensioners living in Wales between 2017-18 and 2019-20 were in material deprivation (income is not considered for pensioners). This is slightly lower than the 8% reported last year.