Child Poverty

You will probably be aware that the Budget was announced today and many were eagerly waiting to hear what the Chancellor would have to say about child poverty. His statement on the subject, was that levels of child poverty have come down; this, however, contradicts a recent report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, forecasting that the Chancellor’s tax and benefit decisions will lead to child poverty rising by 400,000 over this parliament and by 700,000 overall by 2020. The report also takes a look over the past decade and estimates the impact that the current government's reforms have had on poverty .

While on the topic, other resources include a study by Young Lives, considers how poverty has been measured and conceptualised in the universal childhood experience and, in particular, the risks faced by children living in chronic poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has commissioned a project that explores the relationship between parenting and poverty. If you are looking for useful statistics, policies, campaigns and related publications, take a look at the Child Poverty Action Group website.

Although now out of print, two influential works have been made available online and are well worth mentioning here; the first is 'Poverty in the United Kingdom', by sociologist, Peter Townsend, who pioneered a relative deprivation approach to poverty that covered a wide range of aspects of living standards, both material and social. The other book is 'Poor Britain' by Mack and Lansley who introduced the concept of ‘socially perceived necessities’.