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Inequality & Hidden Needs in Suffolk

The majority of people living in Suffolk enjoy a good quality of life and the county is typically seen as a fairly prosperous part of the UK – hence deprivation or need is usually not widely recognised or addressed. But a report commissioned by the Suffolk Foundation in 2011 by the University of Cambridge found that:

Nearly 78,000 people in the county live in income deprivation at the most minimal living standard provided by welfare benefits, and well below the ‘poverty line’. This number represents 11 per cent of the total population, and includes 19,000 children aged under 16, and 24,000 people of retirement age.

Moreover, having a job does not always raise household income much above the poverty threshold. There is evidence of in-work poverty and under-counting of deprivation
by standard measures in some parts of the county, particularly Forest Heath

Although Suffolk has many affluent areas, some of the areas that the report identified as disadvantaged are amongst some of the most deprived in the UK.