Local Child Poverty Statistics – Resources for the Media

A note on how the data should be interpreted 

The statistics on local child poverty rates after housing costs presented in today’s report are calibrated to the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Households Below Average Income (HBAI) dataset for FYE 2022 and FYE 2023. The DWP’s data have undergone quality assurance, by this department, prior to publication. However, some issues remain; this is partly due to sampling issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic. We advise that users are encouraged to exercise caution when interpreting the data. We further recommend that users of these Local Child Poverty Statistics focus on longer-term trends to understand how poverty has changed in an area rather than year-on-year changes which are prone to fluctuations, and avoid direct comparisons of the overall rates of child poverty between nations and regions.