From Montfort Communications today based on Opinium research using unique consumer data from Lowell one of Europe’s largest credit management services companies, and publicly available measures to develop the Financial Vulnerability Index:
The latest update to the financial vulnerability index shows how Scotland has dramatically improved its financial health, drastically reducing benefits usage and a large decline in high cost loan usage. The Scottish average vulnerability level is now below the UK average. The data shows Scotland on a different path to the rest of the UK, which is seeing stubbornly persistent levels post-pandemic.
Key Scotland takeaways Lowell’s latest Financial Vulnerability Index
At 39.0 Financial Vulnerability in Scotland is at its lowest level on record after a steady decline from its pandemic era peak of 48.0 in Q2 2020
This decline has been driven by a decline in the number of adults claiming social benefits in Scotland from 15% in Q3 2020 to just 7% in Q4 2020
There has also been a precipitous decline in the usage of high cost loans in Scotland from 21% of Lowell consumers in 2017 to just 6% in Q4 2020
Lowell | Tracking Financial
Vulnerability in the UK (opinium.com)
The explanation? Clear:
Poorer households have gained from the increase and big expansion of the Scottish child payment. The poorest tenth of Scottish households will gain the equivalent of almost £260 per year, or 2% of their incomes, on average, from the combined effect of the benefits and income tax changes. Households with children in approximately the bottom third of the income distribution will gain, on average, around £1,200 per year – around 4%–5% of their incomes.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-02/R242-Analysis-of-scottish-tax-and-benefit-reforms.pdf
Add to this the benefits not even considered by the IFS – free tuition, free prescriptions for all, bus passes – and the evidence that Scotland is on a different path from the rUK and the role of the SNP in government is clear.
They take the credit just as, if it was the other way round, they’d get the blame.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I am pleased you mentioned bus passes for young people.
As someone, who, by choice has never owned a car and uses buses frequently (using my old codger’s pass) I am pleased to see so many young people using these passes, especially primary school age children.
In the past year a new primary school was opened in our area – I do not mean a rebuild, but, an actual new school. Happily, this indicates a rise in population in the area.
Most of the pupils come from around 1km distant and have use a very busy main road. However, now that they have bus passes, most travel to school with pals and siblings, rather than with mammies and grannies. Apart from the first day, when I and my pals started school in 1953, and mammies took us to enrol, we walked to and from school as groups.
The Head Teacher is delighted with the confidence and independence that this has generated in the pupils.
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‘In the past year a new primary school was opened in our area – I do not mean a rebuild, but, an actual new school.’
The SNP, as the party of government in Scotland since 2007, has never spoken enough IMHO about its investment in what has been a large and sustained programme of new build and substantial refurbishment of schools across Scotland in collaboration with local authorities.
As well as this being good for education, given that part of the investment coincided both with the years following the 2009 financial crash and with the prolonged period of Tory imposed austerity from Westminster, the programme was significant for employment in Scotland’s construction sector. As part of the procurement terms, the programme has also delivered a range of community benefits including support for apprenticeships in building trades.
Alert travellers across Scotland will not only be aware of the very many new schools built over the past c.15 years but similarly new FE college campuses. All these construction projects of course deliver a substantial economic multiplier.
And yes the investment in the education estate in Scotland continues!
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Stewart b,
You can add new hospitals to that – community, general, specialist – as well as upgrades, extensions and repurposing of existing hospitals the length and breadth of Scotland. Quite a building programme all on it’s own then add in schools/colleges & social housing
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