UK Poverty 2023: The essential guide to understanding poverty in the UK

UK Poverty 2023 sets out recent trends in poverty across the UK, how levels of poverty differ between groups of people and regions, and the impact it has on people’s lives. This is the second issue of our new-style UK Poverty report, which looks at trends in poverty across many important characteristics and impacts. We know poverty at any stage in life can lead to negative impacts, so it is critical to scrutinise the data thoroughly to work out who is worst affected, determine how trends are changing over time and see what the future prospects are likely to be. Many economic and social trends have changed dramatically in the less than three years since Covid-19 first severely impacted lives in the UK. Throughout each section of this report we had to ask ourselves key questions about the period in which the data was collected. The latest official poverty data is for April 2020 to March 2021, but 2021/22 and 2022/23 are very different years. By looking across a range of data sources and insights we can build up as comprehensive a picture as possible of the current situation and the state of poverty in the UK, and form a judgement of future prospects.