Scottish Household Survey Annual Report

18 Levels of perceived financial difficulty were higher in more deprived areas, as measured by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. For the proportion of households who reported that they were not managing well, there was a downward trend by level of area deprivation. Seventeen per cent of households in the ten per cent most deprived areas reported that they were not managing well financially, dropping to nine per cent in the fourth and fifth decile, and to three per cent for households in the ten per cent least deprived areas. Over time, there has consistently been a gap in how the household is managing financially between those in the 20 per cent most and least deprived areas, with households in the most deprived areas being less likely to say they were managing well. Households where the highest income householder (HIH) identified as a man were more likely to say they managed well financially compared to those where the HIH identified as a woman (60 per cent and 49 per cent respectively) There has been an overall increase in the proportion of households reporting having savings of £1,000 or more, from 43 per cent in 2009 to 56 per cent in 2019. Households with a lower net annual household income were more likely to report having no savings than those with higher incomes. The proportion of households where neither the respondent nor their spouse or partner had a bank or building society account has fallen from 12 per cent in 1999 to one per cent in 2019.