MEASURING INCOME AND POVERTY AT A LOCAL

LEVEL

Sian RasdaleSocial Justice Analysis, Scottish Government

Why the Family Resources Survey cannot be used

• The FRS sample is designed to be representative of all income levels

• The Scottish Government pay to double the sample size to 4,500 households and get coverage North of the Caledonian Canal

• This ensures National poverty estimates have acceptable confidence intervals of between 1 & 2 percentage points

Why the Family Resources Survey cannot be used

• For Local Authority level poverty estimates to have acceptable confidence intervals:

• Additional sample size: 28,000 households

• Additional cost: £14m

• Interviewer capacity does not exist to achieve this

• The FRS Consortium said No

Alternatives

• Census 2011

• Scottish Household Survey

• DWP Benefit data

• HMRC Tax Credit data

• Labour Force Survey

Scottish Household Survey Development

• The SHS collects income data from the Highest Income Householder & their spouse/partner

• Reporting:– % of households by income band– Nationally & large LAs every year – Smaller LAs every two years

• SHS data recommended for Single Outcome Agreements has been published on the Income and Poverty website……

Percentage of small adult households with a net income less than £10,000 per annum

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Scottish Household Survey

• Development work:– Improve weighting so frequencies can be

reported– Impute income from other householders so

household income can be equivalised– Methods may be applied to Scottish House

Condition Survey too

• This will not provide LA poverty figures, but may provide LA low income estimates

Child and Working Tax Credit Counts

• HM Revenues & Customs hold data on the number of families and people in receipt of tax credits

• Available at LA level (National statistics) and datazone level (Experimental statistics)

• Recommended proxy for child poverty measure at Local Authority level published on Income and Poverty website…….

Percentage of children living in households that are dependent on out of work benefits OR Child Tax Credit

more than the family element

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Points to note about Tax Credit data

• Overall proportion (44%) much higher than child poverty rate (21%)

• Not all entitled people claim• Eligibility rules change

– youngest child criteria for IS is changing • Denominator is estimated population under

20 years old: enumerator is children under 16 or 20 in FTE

• The GROS population estimates are also subject to error

Potential Development of the Labour Forces Survey

• Collects data on earnings

• And information about which benefits adults take-up (but not amount)

• Does not collect information about other sources of income

• Potential for imputation methods to be applied to provide household income estimates

What should we prioritise?

• We need to know what would be most useful to you

• How will the data be used?– Monitoring changes over time?– Identifying areas or cohorts for interventions?– Understanding causes and consequences?

• Do you have access to other sources?