This briefing, from CPAG, End Child Poverty, the Church of England, and the Benefit Changes and Larger Families project, marks the sixth anniversary of the two-child limit.
On the sixth anniversary of the two-child limit, a Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) survey finds widespread suffering and hardship among families affected by the policy with parents struggling to meet children’s basic needs as living costs soar.
A report commissioned by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University has found a widening gap between the cost of raising a child in Scotland and actual family incomes, despite the significant impact of Scottish government policies and lower childcare costs.
This briefing summaries the findings of two papers from the Benefit Changes and Larger Families research study which explore whether the two-child limit has affected families’ decisions about how many children to have.
Emergency support is financial and in-kind support provided by local authorities in England and Scotland, and by the Welsh government. What role can it play in reducing demand for food banks and food aid in Britain? CPAG has just concluded a two year research project, Ending the Need for Food Banks, to examine how emergency support could be redesigned so it does just that. What could this new system look like?
Under the two-child limit, parents are not entitled to any extra support through universal credit or child tax credit to help with raising a third or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017. This means they lose out on up to £2,935 a year, and puts families’ budgets under enormous strain. Five years after the introduction of the two-child limit, an estimated 1.4 million children in 400,000 families are now affected by the policy. Unless it is abolished, the number of children affected will reach 3 million, as more children are born under the policy.
This joint report from CPAG, the Church of England and the Welfare Reform and Larger Families research project presents the latest estimates of the number of families affected by the two-child limit, and provides an insight into the impact of the policy using survey data from families directly affected by it. It is a continuation of a series of annual reports tracking the impact of this policy over time.
In August, Child Poverty Action Group and the Church of England published a report, Poverty in the Pandemic, which offered a glimpse into the lives of low-income families trying to survive the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. This report provides an update on how families with children are managing financially, based on an additional 393 online survey responses received in the period since the last report was published, up to the end of November 2020.
The year 2020 has put unprecedented pressures on families bringing up children. Parents across the world have taken on new challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic in keeping their children healthy and safe as well as properly fed, educated and entertained at a time when they have been required to stay at home, and when many families’ livelihoods have been threatened. Our cost of a child report looks at what items families need to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for their children in 2020.
