CPAG’s annual Cost of a Child report looks at how much it costs families to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for their children. It is calculated using the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research, carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Raising a child costs £260,000 for couples, £290,000 for a lone parent. The two-child limit leaves three-child, working families with huge income gaps. The PM’s milestones must bring concrete improvements for struggling families.
CPAG’s annual Cost of a Child report looks at how much it costs families to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for their children. It is calculated using the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research, carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
While the additional financial support provided to households with children in Scotland is having a positive impact on family incomes compared with the UK as a whole, many are still struggling to meet a socially acceptable standard of living.
It has long been the case that having a second earner can change the risk of a family being in poverty. But it is not easy to take on paid work, and families often face lots of barriers. What are these barriers? What effect do they have on parents’ ability to work? And what role has CPAG’s Your Work Your Way project, with its tailored support approach, had in supporting potential second earners into work?
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.
Families in 2022 are facing the greatest threat to their living standards in living memory. Much has been written about these pressures, but to put them into context, we need to understand what has been happening to children’s and families’ costs in recent years. The Cost of a Child reports have been produced annually for a decade, and this 2022 edition presents the latest evidence of what families need as a minimum, and how this compares to the actual incomes of low-income families.
Child Poverty Action Group’s annual cost of a child report looks at how much it costs families to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for their children. Since 2012, this report series has systematically monitored the minimum cost of a child. This report updates those calculations for 2021 and outlines the factors affecting the latest figures. The total cost of raising a child to the age of 18 now stands at £160,692 for a couple and £193,801 for a lone parent.
