The Northern Ireland Poverty Bulletin 2017/18

A publication entitled “The Northern Ireland Poverty Bulletin 2017/18” was published today by Department for Communities.

The Northern Ireland Poverty Bulletin is produced annually by the Department for Communities and contains statistics on income and poverty for various population groups.

The bulletin provides analysis on two measures of poverty:

1. Relative Poverty - the proportion of individuals who have incomes below 60% of the UK median.
2. Absolute Poverty - the proportion of individuals who have incomes below 60% of the UK (inflation adjusted) median income in 2010/11.

A more detailed report ‘The Households Below Average Income’, is due to be published in Summer 2019.

Key findings with regard to Relative Poverty Before Housing Costs (BHC) are summarised below:

• 16% of individuals were in poverty, approximately 292,000 individuals; 2pps lower than the 2016/17 estimate of 18%.
• 19% of children were in poverty, approximately 85,000 children; 3pps lower than the 2016/17 estimate of 22%.
• 15% of working-age adults were in poverty, approximately 162,000 working-age adults; 1pp lower than the 2016/17 estimate of 16%.
• 15% of pensioners were in poverty, approximately 45,000 pensioners; 4pps lower the 2016/17 estimate of 19%.
• While there appears to be large changes in poverty estimates among some of the population sub-groups (e.g. Pensioners), none of the above changes are statistically significant. This is due to the higher levels of uncertainty surrounding estimates for groups with small sample sizes.

The analysis has also been produced on an After Housing Costs (AHC) basis and there were no significant changes in the poverty estimates for any of the population sub-groups.

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