Child poverty in your area
“I remember how poverty made me feel. Always being acutely aware of your social position forces you to mature a lot earlier… At 11-years of age and knowing about your parents finances and what they can afford– no child should be in a position to know that.”
Liv, an End Child Poverty Youth Ambassador
At the beginning of July 2022 the End Child Poverty Coalition and the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University released new research showing the reality of child poverty in the UK.
This comprehensive picture, broken down by parliamentary constituency and local area, helps us to understand the current situation and to see how this has changed over time.
Use the maps below to find the child poverty figures for your local area.
Local child poverty rates, After Housing Costs
- Use the maps below or download the data tables to find out the level of child poverty in your constituency and local authority
- Take action for children across the country by emailing your MP
- Hear what young people say about poverty
- Read the report and national press release
- Have questions? Read our FAQs
A note on how the data should be interpreted
The figures are based on the Department for Work and Pensions Children in low income families: local area statistics which estimates the poverty rate before housing costs. A statistical model is used to estimate child poverty after housing costs which draws on household survey data alongside local area statistics on private rent levels. The statistics are calibrated to regional 3-year averages from Households Below Average Income (HBAI) for the financial years 2018/19 to 2020/21. The HBAI figures for 2020/21 are less reliable than earlier years due to sampling issues related to the pandemic. This should be kept in mind when interpreting the statistics released today, but the impact is lessened by the use of three-year averages for regional figures. More information on HBAI is available here.
Users are advised that the data for individual local authorities and parliamentary constituencies are subject to small statistical fluctuations year-on-year and should be considered within the context of the regional or the longer-term local trend.
Look up child poverty in your constituency or local authority
This interactive map shows the number and percentage of children in poverty (after housing costs) by constituency. You can search for your constituency using the search bar at the top, or find it and click directly on the map. It is shaded to highlight the differences between areas of the country – the darker the map, the higher the child poverty rate.
This chart allows you to track how the child poverty rate in a constituency has changed over time, between 2014/15 and 2020/21. You can also select up to four others to compare it to – use the search bar to find and select the constituencies you want to look at.
There is substantial variation between the nations and regions of the UK. Child poverty has continued to increase in the North East and Wales, and the North East now overtaken London to have the highest child poverty rate (after housing costs) in the UK.
The following interactive plot shows how the data is dispersed within the regions of the UK. Each dot on the chart represents a constituency.
The wide distribution in London, for example, shows that your likelihood of being in poverty depends very much on where you live. Conversely, the much more concentrated distribution in the North East shows that a large proportion of constituencies in that region have similarly high child poverty rates.
