Progress and Persistent Gaps: How the New Index of Deprivation Attempts to Measure Rural Poverty

Released: 05.11.25

On 26 September 2025, Plymouth Marjon University published The Pretty Poverty Report (Ovenden-Hope, Brown and Achtaridou, 2025), documenting the hidden realities of rural deprivation in Cornwall to expose the inadequacies of the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 in identifying deprivation in rural areas. As the author and lead researcher of the report, I was eager to review the Government’s  Indices of Deprivation 2025 (IoD 2025), including a supplementary report on rural areas, released on 30 October 2025. This timing offered a unique opportunity to assess the new index for place-sensitive measurement of rural deprivation in line with recommendations in The Pretty Poverty Report.

Why Does Valid Measurement of Deprivation in Rural Areas Matter?

The IoD 2025 is not just a set of statistics; it determines how billions of pounds in public funding are allocated in England. Schools, health services, community programmes, and regeneration projects all depend on deprivation rankings to target resources. When rural poverty is invisible in these indices, rural communities lose out on essential support.

The Pretty Poverty Report (2025) identified that while 17% of household poverty occurs in rural settings, the previous Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD 2019) identified only 2% of rural areas as deprived. This massive discrepancy means rural communities, including many across Cornwall, have been systematically underfunded. The lived experience of rural deprivation was being missed by the IMD 2019 statistical measurements.

What the IoD 2025 Has Improved

The new indices include several improvements that directly respond to concerns raised by rural stakeholders, including findings from our research:

1. After Housing Costs Income Measurement

This is perhaps the most significant change. The IoD 2025 now measures income after housing costs (AHC) at 70% of median income, rather than before housing costs at 60% median.

This matters enormously for Cornwall where homes cost 11 times average earnings and only 11% of housing stock is social housing (compared to 18% nationally). Our research participants described situations where "I essentially needed a close family member to pass away so that I could actually afford to live by myself". The AHC approach begins to capture this reality for Cornwall and other rural areas in England.

2. Capturing Seasonal Employment

The IoD 2025 now uses 12 consecutive months of benefit claims data rather than a single August snapshot. This directly addresses our finding that Cornwall's tourism-dependent economy, where tourism accounts for 20% of employment, creates  systematic seasonal insecurity invisible to single-point measures.

The new approach also includes Universal Credit in-work claimants whose income falls below 70% median after housing costs, capturing the in-work poverty our research documented across Cornwall's hospitality and care sectors.

3. Enhanced Transport and Geographic Barriers

The geographic barriers domain now includes public transport frequency and travel time indicators, recognising that rural residents face access challenges beyond simple distance measurements.

Where Critical Gaps Remain

Despite these improvements, the IoD 2025 fails to capture several defining features of rural deprivation that were revealed in The Pretty Poverty Report.

1. Transport: Improved but remains underweighted

The Pretty Poverty Report identified transport dependency as "the most prominent theme across all six study areas" and the "primary determinant of rural life quality and economic participation". Participants consistently emphasised; "I couldn't do my life without having a car". The IoD 2025 focuses on public transport use, ignoring the dependency on car ownership and use for rural living. Car ownership is not a luxury or choice; it is essential for everyday living. The mandatory cost of car ownership as a ‘rural tax’ remains invisible to the governments measure of deprivation and weighted at the 2019 level of 9.3% in Barriers to Housing and Services.

2. Second Homes: Completely unmeasured

Cornwall has over 20,000 homes out of residential use, with two-thirds classified as second homes often used as holiday rentals. This creates what our research participants described as an availability crisis where "you will be lucky to see half a dozen houses with lights on" in winter. The IoD 2025 includes new housing affordability indicators but does not measure second home displacement at all. This fundamental driver of Cornwall's housing crisis remains invisible to deprivation measurement.

3. The Rural Premium: Acknowledged but not quantified

Evidence shows rural residents typically need to spend 10-20% more on everyday requirements than urban residents. A single adult needs £18,600 in remote countryside compared to £14,400 in urban areas to reach minimum living standards. While the IoD 2025's AHC approach captures housing costs, it cannot measure transport costs (the largest rural household expense excluding mortgages), fuel poverty, or higher food and service costs. The Government's report acknowledges rural households face additional costs but concludes "there is little information available in national administrative microdata to reflect this".

4. Digital Exclusion: Identified but not measured

Our research documented how healthcare services are increasingly moving online, yet Cornwall's internet speeds are 29% worse than the UK average. This creates  "compound barriers" where areas may show adequate geographic proximity to services while residents face effective inaccessibility due to digital exclusion. The IoD 2025 Rural Report acknowledges digital inclusion metrics should be added but includes no digital connectivity indicators due to data limitations.

The Numbers Tell the Story – nothing much has changed for rural areas

The IoD 2025 shows a slight increase in rural deprivation:

• 3% of rural LSOAs now rank in the most deprived decile (up from 1.0% in IMD 2019)
• 0% of rural LSOAs rank in the most deprived 30% (up from 7.8%)

But these figures do not represent the lived reality of rural deprivation. Interestingly, the IoD 2025's own indicator-level data shows 10.3% of all income-deprived people live in rural areas. This demonstrates substantial rural deprivation exists even when area-level rankings suggest otherwise, confirming our critique in The Pretty Poverty report on spatial aggregation masking dispersed poverty.

Why These Gaps Matter for Cornwall (and other rural-coastal areas)

Rural and rural-coastal areas sit at the intersection of all the IoD 2025 measurement failures:

• Mandatory car ownership due to poor/limited/no public transport, yet transport barriers are underweighted
• 20,000+ second homes driving housing displacement, yet this remains unmeasured
• Tourism-dependent economy creating seasonal economic precarity, partially captured,
• 29% slower internet than UK average, yet digital exclusion is unmeasured
• Geographic, socioeconomic, cultural isolation in education as a composite effect is uncaptured
• Dispersed poverty within LSOAs creates an averaging effect, yet spatial aggregation unchanged

The IoD 2025 improvements are welcome, but policymakers and funding bodies must not rely solely on IoD 2025 deprivation rankings when assessing rural need.

The Bigger Picture: Rural Justice

This analysis reveals a fundamental tension - the IoD 2025 framework requires nationally consistent administrative data applied uniformly across all areas, but rural deprivation manifests through dynamics that administrative data cannot adequately capture. Second home displacement, essential transport costs, dispersed poverty, digital exclusion, educational isolation, are not statistical quirks, they are the daily reality for many thousands of families across Cornwall and rural England.

Rural Deprivation Dimension	The Pretty Poverty Report (2025)	IoD 2025 Rural Report	IMD 2019 Status	Shortfall
Spatial Aggregation	Output area/parish recommended	LSOA (minor BUA data available)	LSOA	Spatial aggregation masks pockets of rural disadvantage
Transport Dependency	Central theme, calls for increased weighting	DfT Connectivity Score (excludes car travel)	Modest weighting	Still underweighted, car cost ignored
Housing Displacement	Second homes, displacement, unavailability	Overcrowding added; core homelessness	Affordability, homelessness	Displacement not captured
Employment Precarity	Seasonality, underemployment, skills mismatch	12-month average, but not depth	Participation/ unemployment	Quality of employment not captured
Healthcare/Service Withdrawal	Withdrawal, accessibility, digital exclusion	Patient-GP ratios, broadband speed added	Distance-based access	Service quality, digital exclusion lacking
Educational Isolation	Transport barriers, aspiration, provision	Unchanged; no direct isolation metrics	Standard deprivation	Geographic aspiration unmeasured
Community Resilience	Highlights social capital/mutual aid	Acknowledged but not measured	Not included	Masks deprivation, no direct indicator

Looking Forward

The IoD 2025 has engaged with rural critiques and made some methodological improvements, but fundamental measurement reform remains necessary for place-based equity.

"Addressing rural deprivation requires fundamental shifts in how we measure, understand, and respond to disadvantage in rural communities—moving from urban-centric assumptions to rural-specific realities grounded in lived experience" The Pretty Poverty Report, 2025: 9

Until dispersed poverty, i.e., rural and coastal deprivation, is measured by approaches commensurate with the impact, rural communities will continue to be disadvantaged by funding formulas established by measures designed for densely populated urban contexts.

About the Author

Professor Tanya Ovenden-Hope is Professor of Education and Dean of Place and Social Purpose at Plymouth Marjon University. Her research focuses on place-based inequity, and educational isolation. She is lead researcher and author of The Pretty Poverty Report (2025).

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The Cornwall Rurality Matters research was funded by the Diocese of Truro.