About this data

Source: DWP, Households Below Average Income (HBAI), financial years ending 1995 to 2025

• Relative poverty means living in a household with an income below 60% of the median (middle) income in that year.
• Regional samples are small, so DWP publishes three-year averages. Even so, differences of a few percentage points between regions, or from one year to the next, may not be meaningful.
• DWP does not use 2020/21 below UK level because of the pandemic's effect on the survey. Averages that include that year are based on the other two years, and there is no figure for 2020–2022.
• Northern Ireland is included from 2003–2005. The UK line starts in 2003–2005; earlier averages cover Great Britain only and are not shown.
• Before housing costs (BHC) measures income before rent, mortgage interest, water rates and similar costs are paid. After housing costs (AHC) subtracts them, so it better reflects the money people have left to live on. Pensioners, many of whom own their homes outright, have lower poverty rates after housing costs; families with children have higher ones.
• From 2021/22, DWP uses administrative records for income from benefits instead of what people report in the survey, so figures before and after are not directly comparable. The lines are broken at that point.

This chart appears in Poverty.