Child poverty statistics

New research by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, for the End Child Poverty coalition, shows the full extent of child poverty across the UK, before the Coronavirus pandemic and how it has changed since 2014/15.

Covid-19 has led to big falls in household incomes across the country, with further reductions to come. But what has the overall effect been on household incomes? We know that pre-Covid-19 4.2 million children were living in poverty. But what is poverty? How has this number changed? Is it just that number that we care about? And what can be done to help families in poverty in the UK?

This week, the UK Government published its annual statistics on the number of households affected by the two-child limit policy, which restricts support through tax credits and universal credit to the first two children in a family. Its reach is growing steadily over time. The new figures show that 911,000 children now live in affected households. The majority (59 per cent) of those households contain three children.

Black lives matter, particularly the lives of children. Poor children are more likely to be behind in school than their wealthier peers, have reported lower sense of well-being, have poorer health outcomes and even employment difficulties in adulthood. But we don’t talk enough about the fact that some children in black and minority ethnic (BME) families are more likely to experience poverty.

We were very sad to learn that our longstanding friend and inspiration, John Veit-Wilson, died on 10 May. He was CPAG's last remaining founder member. John was a Trustee for many years and an intellectual power house on our policy committee. He will be sadly missed. This was his last blog for CPAG.

Coronavirus has sent a seismic shock through the whole of Welsh society. In the space of a few weeks, workplaces and schools have closed, and nearly all of us have experienced major disruption to our normal lives. It has been a deeply unsettling time for welsh children and young people. Nearly half a million children have suddenly found themselves cut off from their schools, their friends and their extended family. In the midst of this, educators are working round the clock to develop distance-learning strategies so children and young people can continue their education at home.

As the Government puts in place welcome emergency measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic, child poverty continues its upward trend without an effective strategy to tackle it.

The increase to the universal credit (UC) standard allowance and the working tax credit basic element by £20 per week as part of the government’s response to the Coronavirus is welcome. According to the Resolution Foundation[1] “Having recently fallen to their lowest real-terms value since the early 1990s, the main adult rate of unemployment benefits is now at its highest ever level, as the chart below shows. Relative to average earnings, it is at its highest level since 1998-99

Families already living under the poverty line have been pushed deeper into poverty since 2012, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows. And, the analysis finds, the number of children in poverty in households where all the parent(s) work full time - be they single or couple-parents - has doubled from 200,000 in 2012/13 to 400,000 in 2017/18.*