Government’s record on poverty depends on which measure you use

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Rishi Sunak claimed the government has “reduced not just the number of people living in poverty but the number of children living in poverty”.

As we’ve explained before, including when the Prime Minister made a similar claim earlier this month, whether this is correct depends on which poverty measure you use.

The Department for Work and Pensions publishes figures on two different poverty measures—absolute and relative poverty—expressed before and after housing costs. We’ve written more about how poverty is measured here.

The latest figures show the number of people in absolute poverty after housing costs decreased from 13.1 million in 2009/10 to 12 million in 2022/23, while absolute poverty before housing costs also decreased, from 9.9 million to 9.5 million, over the same period.

However, the number of people in relative poverty increased over this period from 13.5 million to 14.3 million after housing costs, and from 10.4 million to 11.4 million before housing costs.

The number of children in absolute poverty after housing costs meanwhile fell from 3.7 million in 2009/10 to 3.6 million in 2022/23. 

But the equivalent figure before housing costs shows an increase since 2009/10, from 2.5 million to 2.6 million. 

The number of children in relative poverty has increased between 2009/10 and 2022/23, both after housing costs (from 3.9 million to 4.3 million), and before housing costs (from 2.6 million to 3.2 million). 

Looking at year on year change, the number of children in poverty has increased under all measures in 2022/23 compared to the previous year, while the overall number of people in poverty increased under all measures except relative poverty after housing costs.