Families With Children Among Groups Facing 'Unacceptably High Rates Of Poverty'
A new report by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that though poverty levels have stayed relatively stable over the years (21% in 2023-4; levels have stayed between 20% and 22% every year since 2006-6), the nature of poverty has changed.
More people in poverty were in “very deep poverty,” or dealing with an income “at most two-thirds of the poverty line”, than usual – 6.8 million, or almost half of those in poverty.
“This is both the highest absolute number of people, and the highest proportion, on record, going back to 1994/95,” the report, which measured changes to poverty levels under the last Conservative-led government, reads.
Meanwhile, the levels of “destitution”, or when people can no longer afford to keep themselves warm, fed, and dry, “more than doubled between 2017 and 2022″.
Which groups are especially likely to face poverty in the UK?
In the report, the authors noted that not all groups face the same risk. “Every year, we see the same groups disproportionately trapped in poverty, with disabled people, people from some ethnic minority groups, people in larger families and renters all experiencing elevated rates,” they said.
They created a list of people facing “unacceptably high levels” of poverty, including:
- Families with children,
- Members of some minority ethnic groups, like Bangladeshi, Black African, and Pakistani households,
- Muslim households,
- Disabled people,
- “Informal” (unpaid) carers,
- People in workless households,
- Social and private renters,
- People claiming income-related benefits.
Why are families with children at a higher risk of poverty?
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that children are overall more likely to face poverty than the rest of the population (31% vs 21%).
Families with three or more children were especially likely to be in poverty (44%).
The Foundation suggested this is because “benefit policies have a disproportionate impact on larger families,” including the two-child limit and benefits caps (the current government will end the two-child benefit cap in April of this year).
Childcare costs, and the effect they can have on parents’ earning potential, matter too, they wrote.
That might be why part of the reason why lone parent families (43% poverty rate) and families where the youngest child is under five (36% poverty rate) often struggle financially.
Poverty “can limit people’s propensity to take rewarding risks or plan for the future, holding back individual and national economic growth,” the authors said.
“Poverty will worsen a child’s development, educational attainment and future earning power.”
The longer poverty is allowed to continue, the worse it may get
The Foundation said that, “Just as evidence shows that the longer a family spends in poverty the worse the effects on that family, the longer we tolerate unacceptably high levels of poverty the worse it is for our country.
“The corrosive impacts of poverty on families – fatigue, hunger, stress and reduced connectivity – hamper both their participation in society and their scope to make a bigger economic contribution. Failure to address poverty can hold back economic growth itself.”
The authors of the report say that they think the UK’s future prospects are “deeply worrying” on this front. Stagnant wages, high housing costs, and near-“destitution”-level benefits contribute to the “corrosive” force.
But they say that families without children also face “bleak” futures, and stressed that to help child poverty rates, the government needs to address poverty as a whole.
“We need the Government to widen its poverty perspective beyond children and to think more systematically about the causes and consequences of poverty for everyone who is affected, all of whom will be worrying about how to make ends meet and are being prevented from thriving,” they wrote.
“The bottom line is we need to redesign the relationship between economic policy, labour markets, public services, and social security.”