What impact will rising fuel prices have on fuel poverty? How many households are spending ever greater proportions of their income on fuel? And who will be worst affected?
It’s a relief that benefits and the benefit cap will rise with inflation. But this is only the fourth time benefits have risen by inflation in the last ten years and as a result of austerity - that today the chancellor praised - there are almost 4 million kids living in poverty in the UK. Today’s package will not stop the ice from cracking under struggling families.
DWP figures out today show 4 million children are in households on universal credit facing big income cuts if benefits are not uprated with inflation in Thursday’s Autumn Statement. Twenty-nine per cent (1.15m) of these children are aged four or younger.
Cost of a child reaches almost £160,000 for couples, £200,000 for lone parents. 2021-2022 saw the biggest annual deterioration in living standards since 2012. The government must increase benefits with inflation at the Autumn Statement.
A year like no other charts the ups and downs of family life on a low income during the unprecedented times of Covid 19. We (participants and researchers from the Covid Realities research project) wrote the book to show how hard life was and the change we need to see.
Lower-paid jobs – nursery assistants, street cleaners, van drivers – gain less from the NI cut so will see a bigger cumulative loss to income if benefits increase with earnings instead of inflation.
Two hundred thousand more children will be pushed into poverty if benefits are uprated by wages rather than inflation, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds. Almost all these children will be in families where at least one parent is working.
"Despite his rhetoric about supporting families, this was in reality a statement for the 1 per cent, saying more about bankers’ bonuses than helping hungry kids..."
Households subject to the benefit cap will from April be battling the cost of living crisis £65 worse off than they would be if they were not capped, unless the cap is uprated, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds.