Nearly Half a Million Scots Facing ‘Profound Financial Hardship’

Close to half a million Scots are in a position of profound financial hardship, according to a new set of figures.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has found that the number of Scots in what’s categorised as “very deep poverty” has risen dramatically over the course of the past 20 years.

According to the JRF, there were roughly 310,000 people in Scotland living in very deep poverty as of 1994 but by the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 the figure was close to 460,000.

The difference between those two numbers effectively means a figure equivalent to the entire population of Dundee have been pushed into very deep poverty over the past two decades.

As a charity, the JRF has made the case that governments both in Edinburgh and London should be doing more than they have been to help and support people living on very low incomes.

Benefits are clearly an important part of the picture when it comes to tackling deep poverty, particularly Universal Credit, which the JRF has argued should be increased to give more people a better chance of living heathier, better lives.

The charity has said that too many people across Scotland are being left to struggle desperately to cover even their most essential outgoings on a day to day basis.

The latest JRF figures only reflect data up to 2020 so they don’t show the recent impacts of the cost of living crisis which has seen more and more Scots battling with serious debt problems.

Reflecting on his own organisation’s report, the JRF’s associate director for Scotland Chris Birt commented: “The story of poverty in Scotland over the past 20 years is a bleak contradiction that both the UK and Scottish governments need to wake up to.

“This rise in very deep poverty can be plainly seen in the hundreds of thousands of food bank parcels provided across the country every year, as well as the growing gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of Scotland.”

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