I unashamedly repost this from the TUC blog this morning because it needs to be widely known. Landman Economics is run by Howard Reed, who comments here on occasion:
Government cuts mean that children from working households now account for two-thirds of those living in poverty in the UK.
Shocking new figures published today by the TUC reveal that the number of children from working households growing up in poverty is set to rise to 3.1million this year — 1 million more than in 2010.
The analysis by Landman Economics for the TUC also shows that 600,000 children with working parents have been driven into poverty as a direct result of government policy.
Families where both parents work in the public sector have been hit especially hard. Cuts to in-work benefits, changes to benefit uprating mechanisms, and increased pay restrictions have all contributed to a loss of income that has left growing numbers of children mired in poverty.
According to our analysis, government policies on pay restraint and tax-benefit policies since 2010 mean that:
- Families where both parents work in the public sector have seen their average household income plummet by £83 a week in real terms.
- Households where one parent works in the public sector and another in the private sector have lost £53 a week on average.
- Households where both parents work in the private sector have lost £32 a week on average.
The other key factors behind the rise in child poverty include weak wage growth, the spread of insecure work, population growth, and the increase in the number of working families.
If this situation is to improve, working families need to earn enough to support their children. That means raising the minimum wage needs to £10 as soon as possible and ensuring the social security system is nimble enough to prevent families from falling into poverty in the first place.
All of this is within the government's gift. Ministers must take urgent action to end child poverty once and for all.
_________________
Estimated increase in number of children living in poverty with a working parent since 2010 (UK):
A million more children from working households are living in poverty since 2010.
The rise is down to government cuts to in-work benefits and public sector pay.
I would only add this: none of this was necessary. Austerity did not balance the government's books. It did not tackle the economic issues that we faced, all of which still exist. All it did was shrink the state for ideological reasons - at cost to children.
I suspect George Osborne can sleep at night with that. I could not.
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All part it would seem of the mindless economic and socially regressive “Twin Track Development Programme” forming in Western economies:-
http://evonomics.com/america-regressing-developing-nation-people/?utm_source=newsletter_campaign=organic
The Tories don’t care. If they did they wouldn’t implement policies that create such a situation. Last July, May’s response in the Commons to the issue raised by Liverpool MP Daniel Carden was: “We look at these issues of households and poverty, but as I said to the leader of the opposition, the best way that we can deal with poverty, the best route out of poverty is for people to get into the workplace and for us to ensure that there are other jobs and better paid jobs being provided for people in the future.” (https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/theresa-mays-heartless-response-liverpool-13354724).
Like zombies she and her government walk around repeatedly muttering scripted mantras to themselves (and the MSM): “It’s not true. It’s not true. We have done more to defeat poverty than any other previous government in history. If anyone’s poor it’s their own fault”. And so and so on …… She and her sociopathic government are in complete denial. They should all resign and undergo mass psycho-therapy. As a monetary sovereign nation we could afford the cost but I’m not sure how productive it would be. Probably a waste of time and money.
This is a pitch clothed as statistics, Hans Rosling doing somersaults.
For a start they mean RELATIVE poverty. Not relative to world incomes, in comparison the UK hardly knows what true poverty is, it means relative to mean/median UK incomes. Terms and thresholds defined by people whose job it is to highlight the have-nots. Such presentation techniques ensure the poorest percentiles get left behind, even when real poverty is shrinking. The idea that 3.1 million children are relatively poor eg bottom quarter is self-fulfilling, the idea that they are truly poor or no provided for is nonsense.
Over 2 millions households have been taken out of tax completely thanks to steep increases in the nil-band threshold, and at the same time a progressive minimum wage has been introduced. While we enjoy record employment. All directed to help poor households on low incomes the most.
Who wants a system where those households on welfare are relatively better off than the typical working household?
There are households for whom actual hardship is a daily reality and we should focus on those in genuine need, this sort of article obscures the truth and does no-one any good.
I am always left bemused and saddened by the callousness of comments like this
And the indifference anyone can have to others apparent in need
As well as the casual indifference to the facts noted in the original post that made clear that most of those in poverty are in working households
“MT”: the recent EHRC report written by Jonathan Portes and myself shows that the tax cuts and increases in the minimum wage do not make up for the huge decreases in social security support for low income (working and non-working) families since 2010. See the decile breakdown in the executive summary of the report, downloadable at https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/cumulative-impact-tax-and-welfare-reforms
I am afraid that if you want to make sweeping statements of the kind that you made in your comment you really should read up on the evidence base so that you are speaking from an informed position rather than just an ill-informed diatribe. There are a lot of very well-informed and sharp progressive commentators on Richard’s blog (including Richard himself) and you WILL get found out if you hold forth from a position of ignorance.
Cheers
Howard
Thanks Howard
@ MT
Thanks for authenticating my point.
There is no such thing as absolute poverty. It is just as much a social construct as relative poverty. It is simply another judgement that people make.
If you think I am wrong then construct me a definition of absolute poverty that is true for any person in any culture or country at any age in history or the future. I guarantee you will be unable to do it without making any relative judgements or statements. Even saying ‘enough to keep you alive’ is relative. What yardstick decides what is enough? And for how long need it keep you alive?
What you have really done above is simply parade your own prejudice.
MT do tell us if you’ve ever experienced living on the “progressive minimum wage” and how long for. Now be truthful in your reply!
MT,
This is just plain dumb:
” While we enjoy record employment.”
To begin with there is no such “record” as unemployment was much lower in the post war decades from 1945 to 1975.
https://www.scribd.com/document/39040666/Century-Labour-Market-Change-Mar2003
This, based on ONS stats, is from Business Insider:
“Chronic ‘underemployment’ is slowly replacing the role outright joblessness used to play in the labour market, new stats from the ONS suggest.
There has been a 400% increase in the number of people on zero-hours contracts since 2002.
One million people in part-time work can’t find full-time jobs.
There are now twice as many “underemployed” workers as unemployed workers.
Underemployment has increased since 2002, while unemployment has declined.”
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/ons-underemployment-double-unemployment-rate-2017-9?r=UK&IR=T
Most everyone here knows that and they would also know that every other statement you made was as dumb as the one quoted above. Did you really think that there was any purpose to dropping here like a factory troll going to work on some BTL forum in The Guardian or Independent? That would be a waste of your time and ours as well.
Did you read the report? Working families are struggling, let alone those on benefits.
You may consider that if a child has one meal a day and shoes on, he/she is not “relatively” poor.
2010 really was the beginning of a marked decline in terms of well-being for children.
I saw it happen gradually in the comprehensive school where I was deputy head in charge of, among many things, well-being and discipline (often linked).
More children started to need free breakfast, free school meals, free uniforms. Not because of an influx of new families in the area, but because parents, working parents, found it more and more difficult to make ends meet: stagnating low wages, increase in costs of utilities, precarious working contracts to name a few of the factors which made life more difficult and budgets a lot tighter.
Many of these struggling families were also having problems linked to their insecure financial situations, this impacted on the children’s emotional state.
Many anxious children developed a variety of problems, for which solutions were becoming more difficult to find as school budgets were going down, especially cuts to counselling services and learning assistant services.
By 2013, when I retired, things were getting worse, I know they have deteriorated further since as I have heard from my successor.
LEAs are struggling to meet essential needs. Children are bearing the brunt of this crazy austerity plan, and I cannot accept this. Anyone making excuses and talking about “relative poverty” in this country needs to spend a month doing my job. That’ll vaccinate the toughest Tory…well, maybe not Rees-Mogg.
I suspect that someone within the Tory regime has calculated that the affected people are either non-voters or locked into safe (non-marginal) Labour seats for the most part and therefore expendable.
I’m always left astounded by comments on here. Why is their never an attempt to grasp the relationship between poverty and broken families.
Broken families and single parent families make up the majority of homes where children suffer the greatest amount of poverty. It appears quite obvious to me that if we could value the family the traditional Family we could go along way to reducing child poverty and reduce many other pathological problems children suffer from in broken homes.
And why do you think families get broken? Start with poverty
And then accept that poverty is imposed. No one chooses it
“…..poverty is imposed. No one chooses it.”
Least of all the children.
Children in increasing poverty was, I believe, the original point of the article. Not the frequency of marital breakdown in the UK.
Even if it was the real problem would Mr T J Scales like to estimate how old the children we are presently discussing will be before the real problem, as he appears to see it, was solved?
Is he prepared to wait that long? Are the children able to? Or their children?
A report by UNICEF into child food insecurity in the UK states, “10% of children in the UK are living in households affected by severe food insecurity. Think of it this way, in every class of about 30 kids, 3 will be experiencing periods of sustained hunger.
https://foodfoundation.org.uk/new-evidence-of-child-food-insecurity-in-the-uk/
In a graph, (fig 3, % of children under 15 living in a severely food insecure household), UK is top at 10% followed by Romania at 8%, Ireland 7.5% etc.
It goes on to describe the effects of hunger on children as described very well by the contribution of the deputy head of schools’ letter above.
Politicians of all hues have allowed this country to sink so low that our innocents are no longer protected.
And people are in denial of the reality of this
Richard, you are a very dangerous man
You have no sincerity, you are an ideologue that will cause society to degrade into all out civil chaos If you continue to suppress opinions that are predicated in a humans biology and opposite to yours.
With respect, your opinions are based on pure prejudice
That’s why I have deleted them
Please don’t call again