What counts as child poverty in the UK? Poll discussion

sarahmco

It is necessary to use all three of these definitions for different purposes. It is useful to know which children are 'disadvantaged' materially when looking at school performance, those who are in 'relative poverty' when looking at university admissions and career entry...
But it is important to continue to look at whether any children are still living in real poverty (lack of food, shelter and basic needs being met or in abusive or neglectful homes) as this allows us to compare directly across time and place. It is no good saying that a given percentage of children in this country are in relative poverty and comparing this with a percentage in another county. All this tells us is how divided a country is! And in our county if half of all the children are in relative povery, all that tells us is that half of the country has significantly more money than the other half!
A measure of real poverty is essential for showing children and adults alike how we compare to other countries and times (I repeat here) in order for them to feel grateful and appreciative of what they do have, rather than telling the nation that we are all 'in poverty'.
New measures also need to be taken into account if 'poverty' is to be an indicator of quality of life, including hours of time spent with family, hours of time in front of screens, quality of food, and some credit given to parents who really spend time caring for their children, and may give up work to do this. Regardless of measure of 'poverty', many children's emotional and spiritual needs are not being met in the home and increasingly the pressure is on schools to fill this gap.

Hastobe_Katt

jim-22 wrote: »

In the south are you?
Not bearing the brunt of this awful weather if 16.32 without heating.

Modern life, too much to ask to at least be warm?
Granted, many could afford it but being miserly choose not to spend, like you.

We are one of the richest conglomerates of countries in the world supposedly!

Nope Staffordshire Moorlands near the Peak District. We've had three days of snow with heavy blizzards yesterday and, again, today. Schools have been shut for two days and some roads out of the area closed. Temp tonight is forecast at -11C with severe weather warnings from the Met office through to Sat 4th. On the plus side, we do live in an old cottage which has 18" thick stone walls which retain heat quite well.

It's not being 'miserly'. Using oil, coal and gas is not environmentally friendly and all are limited resources. Turning down the C/H or putting a sweater on and reducing the hours in a day that it is on is good for the environment. You young 'uns are a bunch of fairies

(Managed to keep heating off til 5.30 pm today and didn't really feel cold . Heating switched back off again at 10.30pm.)

charlie792

I think one interesting thing about this poll was the questions on income;

B. Family income below £12,700 a year (60% of the average)
G. A family income below £10,500 a year (50% of the average)

We're these figures meant to include benefits such as housing benefit etc or was it actual earnt income?

Its interesting really as I knew someone (an ex's mother) who's household income was classed as zero - was she in poverty? - no.
She got a free council house, had her gas paid for her, she didnt work due to a mental illness so received related benefits, as a single parent I believe she got extra money for child benefit. I can't remember exactly how much she received but I know it was a fair bit (over £500) every month out of which she didn't have any bills to pay except for groceries of around £50 a week and fags about £80 a week (she was a chain smoker) - On top of this she would give my ex at least £50 a month 'pocket money' and he also received £30 EMA every week for 2 years. He was certainly better off than I was and both my parents work, I had a part time job and earnt myself £35 a week for working 8 hours.

Don't get me wrong Im not being bitter about it but I think its important to consider that if 'income' doesn't include benefit entitlements then I don't really see how it is relative to poverty if your income can be considered zero and be entitled to X amount in benefits.

Paul_Herring

charlie792 wrote: »

I think one interesting thing about this poll was the questions on income;

B. Family income below £12,700 a year (60% of the average)
G. A family income below £10,500 a year (50% of the average)

We're these figures meant to include benefits such as housing benefit etc or was it actual earnt income?

I would imagine most would have assumed it was equivalent gross income from all sources rather than equivalent deductions. So housing benefit might be included (since it is paid out,) council tax reductions probably not.

Interesting point though.

Hastobe_Katt

If you work on those figures then, unless you and your partner are both on benefits, it's difficult to see how those considered to be 'in poverty' by virtue of the income definition can possibly include working families.

Taking the following scenario:

Couple - he works 40 hours per week on minimum wage, she stays at home. Couple have two able bodied children of school age and don't pay any child care costs. They are not claiming any other benefits.

£5.93 * 40 hours * 52 weeks = £12,334
Tax credits = £7,453.64 (working tax credit of £44.11 per week and child tax credit of £98.84 per week)
Because of the level of income the couple would receive council tax rebate of £253.24 (based on band A for our city) and full housing benefit of £2,463.32 (based on paying £100 per week rent).

This is a total gross income of £22,504. If the wife worked (even part-time) this would increase.

i.e. those 'in poverty' by the income definitions above must be non working families...viz those living on the state.

Calculations via https://www.entitledto.co.uk

Paul_Herring

Hastobe_Katt wrote: »

Couple - he works 40 hours per week on minimum wage, she stays at home. Couple have two able bodied children of school age and don't pay any child care costs. They are not claiming any other benefits.

£5.93 * 40 hours * 52 weeks = £12,334
Tax credits = £7,453.64 (working tax credit of £44.11 per week and child tax credit of £98.84 per week)
Because of the level of income the couple would receive council tax rebate of £253.24 (based on band A for our city) and full housing benefit of £2,463.32 (based on paying £100 per week rent).

This is a total gross income of £22,504. If the wife worked (even part-time) this would increase.

Child benefit? Isn't there scope for 'her' to get JSA or similar?

Anyway, as I've mentioned previously, using the family income (from whereever it derives) is a poor absolute metric for determining poverty, since two more or less identical families could have identical income, and by other metrics one could be in poverty, and the other not.

Hastobe_Katt

Yep probably should have included child benefit (which for two kids under the age of 18 would be ~£1600 p.a.) I assumed she would have been at home by choice (worst case scenario kind of thing for income) so wouldn't be 'actively seeking work'. But I agree, there could be additional benefits to add in.

I also didn't gross up the benefits. Taking tax and NI into account (to make it comparable with someone who didn't receive benefits) would add another £5,000 approx to the above making it around £29,000 p.a.

psdie

So Martin/MSE Dan .. we've debated this interesting topic to death .. will there be a follow up commentary from you or Save the Children? :money:

UPDATE: have PM'd MSE Dan with the above, plus: "Plenty of interesting issues raised in the forums, including the effect of state benefits on the prevalence of child poverty, the conflation of "poverty" with "poor"/"disadvantaged" (particularly relative to nations with genuine poverty) and the potentially misleading impression that the use of this term creates (e.g., when campaigning for funds)."

UPDATE #2: .. and MSE Dan hasn't yet bothered to reply, as at 3 days later

psdie

Just read a newly published report on DailyMail.co.uk that "child poverty" (using the 60% below median measure) is decreasing for non-working families, but *increasing* for working families! Hmmm, something is back-to-front in the benefits system.


Also interesting is clarifications in the underlying report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that the "60% below median income" measure is actually AFTER the following have been paid for / covered by benefits!

• Housing costs (mortgage + interest, rent, etc) - don't know about you, but this is something like 70% of my monthly bills!
• Council tax (somewhere around £1.5k/year).
• Buildings insurance and water bills.
• Income tax (so ~£12.7k should be compared with others' *net* income after tax, not gross salaries).

That means that to compare with £12.7k with one's own salary, you must add the following (AIUI, using approx figures I have to hand) excluded costs to the £12.7k threshold: ~£1.5k council tax, ~£320 water, ~£80 buildings insurance, ~£8.6k mortgage (obviously this could vary wildly) = ~£10.5k, *plus* reinstate roughly 31% tax + NI (after deducting ~£6.5k personal allowance) = ~£5.5k.

That's £12.7k + ~£10.5k housing costs etc + ~£5.5k income tax/NI = ~£28.7k equivalent salary. Put another way, if your salary was £28.6k, then you deducted taxes and ~£10.5k housing costs etc (to be comparable with the criteria used, AIUI), it appears that you'd be below the "relative poverty" line. Surely a nonsense definition of "poverty"?!


Interestingly, the JRF report also clarifies that there are a range of different "poverty thresholds", depending on the number of children/adults in the household. From the same JRF report:

• £119pw for a single adult [~£6.2k/yr];
• £161pw for a lone parent with one child under 14 [~£8.4k/yr];
• £206pw for a couple with no children [~£10.7k/yr];
• £288pw for a couple with two children under 14 [~£15k/yr].

I wonder then where the £12.7k figure in the poll comes from then? It seems there isn't a single threshold that applies to all households regardless of income??

To ask the question fairly, the poll *should* have identified Option B as something like: "Income below £15k a year for a couple with 2 children, excluding Council Tax, housing costs, water and income taxes." I wonder how many would have agreed to this as a definition of "poverty" (as distinct from "poor")?

Reassuringly, it seems efforts to come up with a more realistic definition of child poverty are not new (e.g., DWP's "Measuring Child Poverty"): most sensible commentators seem to also take into account factors like "absolute poverty" and "material deprivation", the latter of which appears to be an influence for the items in the poll - things like 2+ pairs of shoes .. but curiously also things like "Swimming at least once a month"!!

Cheers, Ben

Pennylane

I have to say I don't see much child poverty around here. Up at our local school even the young Mums who live in rented accommodation sit outside the school in their cars waiting for their kids to come out and enjoying a leisurely smoke while they wait (at over £6 a packet!!).

If you can afford to run a car you're not hard up. The funny thing is they're all within walking distance.

I also see all the kids coming out in trendy clothes and furry boots.

When I was small we had kids at out school who really were poor. As in shoes with flapping soles or having to wear plimsoles all year round. Not having a winter coat. Not having anything to wear for PE and so on. Families were much bigger then and they really did live hand to mouth. Lots of kids were malnourished and the nurse used to come in and give them big dollops of cod liver oil and malt extract (I think it was).

There weren't the benefits back then, probably just free school meals. I clearly remember every Xmas a family with 9 children who lived opposite us. They quite literally had nothing and on Xmas Eve wealthy local people would arrive with huge boxes of food, turkey, puddings etc for them. In case this sounds like a Victorian scene - this was the 1960's.