Poverty in Scotland

140,000 children in Scotland are still growing up in poor families, warns a new Government commissioned report, The State of the National 2015 document. Relative child poverty before housing costs was 14 per cent in Scotland. Absolute child poverty before housing costs was 15 per cent. Material deprivation before housing costs was 13 per cent. 10.9 per cent of children in Scotland live in workless households.

Almost one in five employees are low paid.

There is still a very long way to go to eradicate child poverty in Scotland. In November 2014 the Institute for Fiscal Studies published projections for Scotland which suggested that the proportion of children in relative poverty would increase by seven per cent and the proportion of children in absolute poverty would increase by 20 per cent, between 2013–14 and 2020–21.