This commissioned work was a short-term project undertaken for the Money and Pension Service (MaPS) – as holders of the national strategy on behalf of the UK Government for improving personal financial wellbeing across the UK.

The aim of the project was to explore the extent of the connections between established local area deprivation indices (indices of multiple deprivation as used in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), as widely used in social policy and other research, with the scores related to financial wellbeing that had been derived by MaPS from a nationally representative survey they had undertaken in 2021.

The project aimed to aid MaPS in their planning for evolving effective financial wellbeing development in the UK as part of the progress of the UK’s 2030 strategy over which they have oversight and operational control.

The results of this work demonstrated various connections between poor/better financial wellbeing (as illustrated using the MaPS financial wellbeing scores applied at local levels) and indices of multiple deprivation. This could suggest that greater targeting of some aspects of personal financial wellbeing development could aid the overall development of national levels of wellbeing in this area towards delivery of the national 2030 strategy.

The implications of the findings of this work are being explored further by and with MaPS to consider the policy and practical implications of these findings.

On-going work connected to this project will continue the analysis of the 2021 data and also provide a comparative analysis with the previous (pre-Covid) data collected by this nationally representative sample in 2018 to consider longitudinal changes in the nature of personal financial wellbeing across the regions of the UK.

Outputs: (MaPS) An analysis of the relationship between deprivation and financial wellbeing

CPFW Financial wellbeing and deprivation: Evidence from 2021 Adult Financial Wellbeing Survey Full data report

Presentation at MaPS Research and Evaluation Research Group 2024

Partners: Money and Pension Service

Team: Lin Tian, Ngoc Dieu Linh Vi and Andy Lymer