The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
Government policy
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16/10/2011
PSE: UK response to social mobility strategy
In Social Mobility and Child Poverty, the PSE: UK research team is highly critical of the Coalition government’s social mobility strategy and, in particular, its claim that the best way to tackle intergenerational mobility is to break the ‘the transmission of disadvantage from one generation to the next’. The PSE paper dismisses the idea that poverty is ‘transmitted’ between generations as ‘simply incorrect’ and argues that the best way to tackle intergenerational disadvantage and low social mobility is to eradicate poverty among children and adults.
Category: Reports -
05/04/2011
Deputy Prime Minister launches social mobility strategy
Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has launched the Coalition government’s social mobility strategy Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers. The strategy focuses on inter-generational social mobility with the aim of ensuring that everyone has a fair chance of getting a better job than their parents.
The approach moves away from financial measures to support disadvantaged families to family intervention and an aspiration to extend pre-school provision to disadvantaged two-year-olds.
The report outlines five broad principles that underpin the government’s approach:
Category: Reports -
04/04/2011
Redefining poverty?
by Stewart Lansley
The government has been aiming to shift the debate on poverty from relative poverty to life chances. So is it aiming to downgrade the goal of abolishing financial poverty?
In March 1999, Tony Blair surprised an audience of academics and policy advisers with an unexpected commitment – to halve child poverty within a decade and 'eradicate' it within 20 years. It was as unexpected as it was bold and raised a few eyebrows among those present. Few experts believed, given the scale of the task, that it would be possible to meet the targets in the timetable laid out. Between 1979 and 1997, the level of child poverty (measured in relative terms) had doubled. When Labour won a landslide victory in 1997, just over a quarter of children – 3.4 million – were estimated to be living in poverty.
Category: Articles -
19/01/2011
Women lose out from government cuts
by Stewart Lansley
The impact of the government’s 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review will fall disproportionately on women, finds two independent reports on the gender impact of the changes. The first report, by the Women’s Budget Group, analyses the overall impact of the tax, benefit and public spending changes in the government’s 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and finds that the cuts represent a reversal in progress made towards gender equality. The second report, a broad brush analysis by the House of Commons library, finds that nearly three-quarters of the cost of the main personal direct tax and benefit measures in the budget is being paid by women.
Category: Articles -
10/12/2010
All in this together?
by Stewart Lansley
The government has consistently argued that under the government spending review those with the broadest backs would take the heaviest burden – that the package would conform to the principle of 'progressive austerity'. However, two independent studies, the first by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the second by Tim Horton and Howard Reed for the TUC, challenge this assessment, finding that the overall impact of the spending review is regressive.
The government's plans, as announced in the 2010 spending review, involve a number of tax rises – especially the rise in VAT to 20 per cent from January 2011 – and an £81 billion package of spending cuts.[1] These are needed, the Coalition argues, to close the fiscal deficit inherited from Labour.
Category: Articles -
03/12/2010
The Field Review
The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor Adults, the final report of the UK Government Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances headed by Labour MP Frank Field, argues for an expansion of provision for children in their early years and a downgrading of efforts to reduce income poverty.
BackgroundIn June 2010, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, commissioned Frank Field MP to conduct an Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances.
The aim of the Review was to:
Category: Reports
