Poverty rates by London borough (2021/22)
Poverty rates by London borough (2021/22)
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Poverty is defined as less than 60% of median household income after housing costs (AHC). This indicator uses a 5 year pooled sample to the stated time period. Please note that data for 2020/21 have been excluded from analysis due to concerns with bias in the sample.
- Data source
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Office for National Statistics, Social and Vital Statistics Division, NatCen Social Research, Department for Work and Pensions (2023) Family Resources Survey, 2005/06-2021/22, Households Below Average Income, 1994/95-2021/22 and Pensioners' Income, 2007/08-2021/22: Safe Room Access [data collection] 11th Edition UK Data Service SN: 7196, DOI: 105255/UKDA-SN-7196-12
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London's Poverty Profile 2023
The poverty rates for London boroughs presented here pool together five years of survey data for all financial years between 2016/17 and 2021/22, excluding 2020/21 as data quality in this year was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of multiple years of data means that the full impacts of the pandemic will not be seen in these results.
Even when pulling together six survey years, the sample sizes for individual boroughs remain uneven and, for some boroughs, small. This means that although we present our best estimates of poverty for each borough, there is some uncertainty around the precise estimates. For the technical- minded, the downloadable data includes the 95% confidence intervals, which demonstrate the scale of uncertainty for each borough.
Even with this degree of uncertainty, we can still say plenty about the variation in poverty rates across London boroughs. To do this in a statistically robust way, we have split boroughs into three groups - those whose poverty rates are close to the London average and those above and below the London average.
What we find is that Westminster, Camden, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Ealing, Wandsworth, Enfield, Haringey, Brent and Lewisham all have poverty rates higher than the London average, while poverty rates in Harrow, Waltham Forest, Hillingdon, Kingston, Sutton, Greenwich, Hammersmith and Fulham, Bromley, Havering, Merton and Richmond upon Thames are lower than the London average.
Proportion of people in poverty in working and non-working families by London borough (2019/20)
Proportion of people in poverty in working and non-working families by London borough (2019/20)
- Note
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Data are pooled across 5 survey years to the date stated. Poverty is defined as 60% of median household income after housing costs (AHC). Data are not available for Kensington and Chelsea because of small sample sizes. A working household is one where at least one person is in employment.
- Data source
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Office for National Statistics, Social and Vital Statistics Division, NatCen Social Research, Department for Work and Pensions. (2021). Family Resources Survey, 2005/06-2019/20, Households Below Average Income, 1994/95-2019/20 and Pensioners' Income, 2007/08-2019/20: Safe Room Access. [data collection]. 11th Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 7196, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-7196-12
- Chart source
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London's Poverty Profile 2022
In almost every borough at least half (50%) of the individuals in poverty were living in working households - that is a household where at least one member was in employment. In just under half of the London boroughs at least 70% of people in poverty lived in working households, with Wandsworth seeing the largest proportion - 82% of its approximately 90,000 in-poverty residents lived in working households. On average in London over these 5 years, 67% of the 2.4m people in poverty lived in households where at least one member was in employment.
You might be interested in
- Overview of London Boroughs
- Boroughs: explore data for specific boroughs
- Poverty over time
- Who is in poverty in London?
