Outline The Challenges Faced By The Government In Abolishing Child Poverty

“Because a fair society and the strongest possible economy depend upon leaving no one behind, Britain must build on the reforms taking nearly one million children out of poverty and give every child the best possible start in life. So our ambition is - by the end of the next decade - child poverty reduced by half - on our way to ending child poverty within twenty years.”

- The Chancellor of the Exchequer, pre-budget report November 1999

Poverty rates in Britain rose sharply in the 1980s. In 1979, 12% of the populations were poor. Poverty here is defined as having net household income below 60% of the median income, after housing cost. By 1999 this had risen to 24%. The situation is even bleaker for children, with almost a third of children living in poor households in 1999. Shortly after taking office the New Labour Government made a commitment to halve child poverty within a decade and to abolish it within two decades. The guiding principle in achieving this goal was the belief that the best route out of poverty is through work. Consequently, the government introduced a plethora of social policy reforms designe

The overall child poverty rate is 34.5% in 1999. About a half of these poor children are in households where nobody is in work and a third are in households where people are working 30 hours or more (full time households). So while it is true that worklessness is a major factor in child poverty, half of poor children are in households with somebody in work. The table also presents what would happen to child poverty if one could magically return work patterns back to their 1979 structure, but retains wages, demographics and benefits at their 1999 structure. Even after this difficult feat, overall child poverty would only fall to a rather disappointing 29.1%. (Note that many of the New Labour reforms had yet to come into force at this time, including the WFTC). However, note that the share of all children who are poor and living in workless households would fall from 17.6% to 11.0%. The reason that overall poverty doesn’t fall so much is that poverty rises among children in working households. The share of all children in poverty and in households with full time work rises from 11.3% to 14.5%. The reason being is that these households have shifted from being workless poor to working poor. However, if one could shift these individuals into work and make this work pay then the goal of halving child poverty may be achieved. For example, if the final column of the table above shows that if work patterns could be returned to 1979 levels and those in households working 30 hours or more could be raised out of poverty then only 14.6% of children would remain poor.

30 plus hours 32.8% 11.3% 49.9% 14.5%

Some topics in this essay:
Note Labour, Childcare Strategy, Chancellor Exchequer, Labour Government, Child Poverty, Tony Blair, child poverty, poor children, Minimum Wage, National Insurance, poor living, children poor, children poverty, children households, distribution poor, children poor living, Credit WFTC, distribution poor children, overall child poverty, start life, poverty rates, children children, children children poor, poor children children,