What better benefits data means for poverty in the UK

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) have improved the income data we use to measure poverty in the UK by linking administrative data about the social security benefits that people receive to their survey responses in the Family Resources Survey (FRS). They have done this for the first time with the 2024/25 data but have also looked back and retrospectively linked people’s benefit records from 2021/22.

While this helps us to get a better picture of people’s incomes in the UK, it means that there is a break in the series so we can’t compare the data from before this change in method, to after. This restricts what we can and can’t say about incomes and poverty in the UK, particularly if we want to talk about change over time. Here we explain:

• what has changed
• what challenges this raises
• how big a difference this has made to poverty measures
• what we can and can’t say about poverty.