One in five Scottish households (21%) are currently living in serious financial difficulty – equivalent to 1.2 million people.
In the rest of the UK, the figure is 17% of households.
The figures are from the latest Financial Fairness Tracker, commissioned by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust and analysed by a team at the University of Bristol. This has been monitoring the personal finances of UK households since the start of the pandemic, with a sample around 6,000 UK households, 552 of which are in Scotland.
