Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found poverty rates north of the border are kept down by relatively low housing costs and higher rates of social renting. With just 100 days until the Holyrood election, the JRF has called on all parties to put reducing child poverty “front and centre of their manifestos”. The UK Poverty 2026 report showed that in 2023/24, one in five people in Scotland (20%) were living in poverty. Child poverty in Scotland was also found to be the lowest in the UK at 23%, compared to 31% in both England and Wales and 24% in Northern Ireland. Across the whole population, the number of people experiencing food insecurity rose by 2.8m over the same period, a 60 per cent increase in just two years.