Absolute Poverty

“Absolute” poverty is a term used to describe a fixed standard of living. One in five Londoners live in households with income below the 2010/11 poverty threshold (adjusted for inflation) after taking account of housing costs.

Unlike the relative poverty measure, this proportion has fallen substantially, from more than 40 per cent, over the two and a half decades for which data are available, to around half that in the 2020/21-2022/23* estimates. The greatest decrease has been for London’s pensioners, from over half to 15 per cent, though it is still above the UK figure. Owing to the cost of living crisis impacting on family finances in 2022/23, especially high inflation, absolute poverty rates among all age groups in London remained static from the previous year in the most recent estimates, apart from for London’s pensioners where the decrease in the poverty rate continued.