Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate she has made of the number of women and girls living below the poverty line in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England; and what assessment her Department has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the levels of female poverty in those areas.

National Statistics on the number and percentage of individuals in low income are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication. Data for Coventry North East constituency and Coventry is unavailable due to insufficient sample size.

HBAI does not publish estimates of low income by an individual’s gender but estimates of low income for women and girls are available on Stat-Xplore (https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/). Guidance in the use of Stat-Xplore is available here: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html

In the three years to 2019/20, the number of women and girls in absolute poverty, before housing costs, in the West Midlands was 500,000, down 100,000 from the three years to 2009/10.

In the three years to 2019/20, the number of women and girls in absolute poverty, before housing costs, in England was 4,100,000, down 400,000 from the three years to 2009/10.

The Department now publishes supplementary official statistics on the number of children in low income families at constituency level and at local authority level. Children in Low Income Families data is published annually. The published table does not include an estimate based on the child’s gender, but it is available on Stat-Xplore.

Due to methodological differences, the figures in these two publications are not comparable.

No assessment has been made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on female poverty in those areas, nor the adequacy of the welfare system in helping alleviate female poverty in those areas.