The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
Government policy
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01/03/2012
ESRC research projects on child poverty identify barriers to mobility
Current policies are unlikely to meet child poverty targets, according to a summary of research projects by the Economic and Social Research Council, Child Poverty Casts A Long Shadow Over Social Mobility. This ESRC Evidence Briefing, one of a series on social mobility, provides a detailed summary of the findings of a number of current research projects on child poverty. The research consistently identifies significant detrimental outcomes for children living in poverty and key barriers to moving out of poverty.
Category: Reports -
01/03/2012
PSE: UK response to the Field Review consultation
In Tackling Child Poverty and Improving Life Chances: Consulting on a New Approach, the PSE: UK research team has responded to the consultation on the Field Review’s report, The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor Adults. The response welcomes the emphasis on early years in the Field report but is critical of key aspects of the report, arguing that key elements of the proposed strategy are ‘narrow, partial and highly likely to be ineffective’.
Category: Reports -
29/02/2012
Welfare Reform Bill passed
The government’s highly controversial Welfare Reform Bill was finally passed by the House of Lords on 27 February 2012 after peers dropped their final resistance to the controversial measures. The Bill, hailed as ‘historic’ by the Prime Minister, aims to save £18 billion from the annual welfare bill and overhauls most of the benefit system.
Key measures include:
Category: News stories -
23/01/2012
Housing benefit cap will hit more households
Estimates of the numbers expected to be affected by the government’s Housing Benefit Cap have risen in an updated impact assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions, Impact Assessment for the Household Benefit Cap. The latest estimate is that the £26,000 benefit cap will reduce the incomes of 67,000 households, covering 90,000 adults and 220,000 children, in the year 2013/14. This is an increase on the government’s previous estimates of 50,000 households. Benefits for these households are expected to reduce on average by around £83 per week. Nearly 20 per cent of those households losing benefit will lose more than £150 per week.
The modelling suggests that, in the absence of any behavioural response to the policy, the numbers of households affected will rise to 75,000 in 2014/15.
Category: Reports -
01/01/2012
Disabled people slam government’s Disability Living Allowance reforms
The Coalition government’s proposed ‘reforms’ to the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) lack support and credibility and are ‘highly misleading’, says Responsible Reform, a report written by sick and disabled people, their friends and carers. Based on an analysis of 500 responses to the UK government’s consultation on its planned changes to disability living allowance, this report argues that the decision to reduce DLA expenditure by 20 per cent may have been based on misleading data about the reasons for growth in DLA. It is estimated that the proposed changes could lead to 500,000 disabled people losing entitlement to the benefit. The report found:
Category: Reports -
15/12/2011
Targeted support promised for Britain’s ‘most troubled families’
David Cameron pledged a network of troubleshooters, along with more targeted support for 120,000 of Britain’s most troubled families, by 2015. Cameron promised families one dedicated worker rather than a ‘string of well-meaning, disconnected officials’.
Under the government’s proposals, families need to meet five out of seven criteria – including truanting children, parents with addiction and antisocial behaviour – to be classified as ‘troubled’.
The government is diverting £448m from existing departmental budgets over four years to help pay for a network of people who will identify families in need of help, make sure they get access to the right services and ensure that action is taken.
Category: News stories -
01/12/2011
Iain Duncan Smith rejects benefits as way to tackle poverty
Tackling child poverty by boosting family income through benefits is a narrow approach that ‘looks set to have failed’ said Ian Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, in a major speech. The speech followed the government’s Autumn Statement, which included welfare measures that on the government’s own projections would lead to an increase in child poverty – another signal of the government’s intentions to develop a new approach to poverty less dependent on benefits.
Duncan Smith claimed there are problems with officially classifying child poverty as a family on 60 per cent or less than the median income, as this had pushed governments into introducing policies with ‘perverse incentives’. He argued that this target created a ‘poverty plus a pound’ approach – where authorities did only enough to keep some families just above the 60 per cent mark without really changing lives, while those at the very bottom could be left behind.
Category: News stories -
29/11/2011
Chancellor’s Autumn Statement
Warning of six more years of austerity, the Chancellor’s package of measures included a number of provisions that, on the Treasury’s predictions, are likely to increase the numbers of children in poverty.
Key points in the statement include:
Category: News stories -
07/11/2011
Incapacity benefit reforms will hit claimants
The government reforms to incapacity benefit will result in severe hardship for hundreds of thousands of households living outside the south of England, according to research published by Sheffield Hallam University in Incapacity Benefit Reform.
The report by Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill of the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research finds:
Category: Reports -
16/10/2011
PSE: UK team’s response to government social mobility review
The PSE: UK research team has produced a detailed response to the government’s call for evidence on their strategy on social mobility and child poverty. While welcoming aspects of the strategy and the overall aims, the PSE: UK team argue that the strategies fail to tackle the multiple structural causes of lack of social mobility and underestimate the importance of material deprivation. Key questions asked in the call for evidence were:
Question 1: What do you think are the links between social mobility and child poverty?
The PSE: UK team welcome the suggestion of increased emphasis on the early years, the availability and quality of services for families and children and improving parenting but argue that parenting quality is not a primary cause of poverty in the UK or in other countries. Parenting skills and poverty both have important but independent effects on children’s outcomes.
Category: Articles
