The UK’s poorest families are getting poorer, with record numbers of people classed as in “very deep poverty” – meaning their annual household incomes fail to cover the cost of food, energy bills and clothing, according to analysis.
Although overall relative poverty levels have flatlined in recent years at about 21% of the population, life for those below the breadline has got materially worse as they try to subsist on incomes many thousands of pounds beneath the poverty threshold.
About 6.8 million people – half of all those in poverty – were in very deep poverty, the highest number and proportion since records began three decades ago, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), which carried out the analysis.
Households on the lowest incomes were still experiencing a cost of living crisis four years on, with millions of people forced to go without food, falling behind on household bills and having to borrow to survive, said JRF.
“Poverty in the UK is still not just widespread, it is deeper and more damaging than at any point in the last 30 years,” said Peter Matejic, the JRF’s chief analyst.
Very deep poverty is defined as less than 40% of the UK poverty threshold after rent. The average income of a household in very deep poverty is 59% below the poverty line. For a couple with two young children this amounts to £16,400 or below.
Although households move in and out of very deep poverty, about 1.9 million people (3%) in the UK are persistently in this category. A couple with two young children in very deep poverty would need to earn an extra £14,700 a year to entirely move out of poverty.
The most recent estimates show about 3.8 million UK people experienced destitution – a category even more extreme than very deep poverty, in which households cannot afford to stay warm, dry, clean, clothed and fed, the JRF said.
The analysis draws on data for the year 2023-24, the final year of the last Conservative government and the latest for which official figures are available. No progress in reducing poverty was made under the Tories between 2010-11 and 2023-24, the JRF concludes.
The JRF welcomed Labour’s recent child poverty strategy, including its scrapping of the two-child benefit limit, which it said would herald the biggest fall in child poverty over a parliament since records began in the 1960s.
But it warned “there remains a seeming lack of urgency and sense of direction” towards tackling hardship beyond the focus on child poverty. Rising numbers of people were food insecure, basic rates of benefits were low and Labour’s manifesto promise to end mass dependence on food banks was making slow progress.
Matejic said: “When nearly half of the people in poverty are living far below the poverty line, that is a warning sign that the welfare system is failing to protect people from harm.
“People want to feel like the country is turning a corner. That means taking action on record levels of deep poverty so everyone can afford the essentials. It means making people feel supported rather than being one redundancy or bout of ill health away from failing to make ends meet.”
A government spokesperson said: “We understand that too many families are struggling, and we are taking decisive action to address poverty by boosting the national living wage by £900, cutting energy bills by £150 from April, and launching a £1bn Crisis and Resilience Fund to help households stay afloat.
“As this report acknowledges, scrapping the two-child limit alongside our wider strategy will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030 – the biggest reduction in a single parliament since records began.”
