Social security policies like the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) are crucial to reducing both poverty and food insecurity. As such, SCP is a key part of the Scottish Government strategies to reduce child poverty and to end the need for food banks in Scotland.
SCP has decreased food bank usage for some types of households
In a new report commissioned by the Trussell Trust, FAI analysis of administrative food bank data evaluates the impact of SCP on the share of food parcels delivered to different types of households.
We find that SCP caused statistically significant decreases in food bank usage for some, but not all, types of households (see Chart 1). We estimate that due to SCP, the share of food parcels has:
Fallen by 1.2 percentage points for single-parent households with children under 5, and
Fallen by 1.8 percentage points for households with children aged 5-16 (without younger children).