What is the evidence on the impact of the benefit cap on children and families in poverty? In particular, how do high housing costs affect experiences of the cap and people's ability to escape it? And why is it so important that the government scraps the policy?
CPAG’s new report shows that the average British class of 30 pupils now has nine children living in poverty; the harder-hit areas have 11. They add up to 4.2 million British children whose parents have too little income to support them properly. Many are in deep poverty. Decades of research have shown the damage poverty does to family life and to children’s growth and development. But why is the risk of poverty high in childhood? What steps should be taken to prevent and end child poverty? What should a long-term cross-government child poverty strategy look like? And what are the immediate priorities for action?
GMPA (now Resolve Poverty) has been supporting local authorities in Greater Manchester and across the country to introduce anti-poverty strategies. What role do local anti-poverty strategies play in helping individuals and communities? What can be learned from work that is currently being done? And what makes a good strategy?
The benefit cap was introduced in 2013, and limits the total amount of support some low-earning and non-working families can receive from the social security system. What has been the impact of this policy? What will a recently announced change to the cap mean for families? And does this change go far enough?
Are poverty and income inequality separate issues determined by different factors? Can low levels of poverty co-exist with high levels of inequality? For most of the last 200 years, these key measures of social fragility have been viewed as separate conditions, with antipoverty policy focused on raising the income floor, largely ignoring what has been happening at the top. But what is the relationship between inequality and the anti-poverty agenda?
The benefit cap has been in place since 2013, but what has its impact been when compared with its objectives? How does the rhetoric match up with the reality for the tens of thousands of families affected? And does the benefit cap have any place during a pandemic?
