The cost of child poverty extends beyond the physical and emotional hardship felt by children growing up in low-income families. In 2008, the total financial cost was estimated to be at least £25 billion a year. In 2023, it has risen to over £39 billion a year.
A family’s ability to get universal credit is often based not on their actual circumstances, but on a fictional version of their circumstances. Welfare rights worker Carri Swann explains.
Universal credit: what needs to change to reduce child poverty and make it fit for families? calls for design and funding changes to improve claimants’ experience of universal credit and to reduce child poverty.
Today we publish our third annual report ‘The Cost of a Child in 2014’, written by Donald Hirsch from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University and funded by JRF. It draws on the Minimum Income Standard project (MIS) to establish how much families need to cover their basic needs like food, clothes and shelter, and to participate in society.