Povery and inequality in the UK: 2008

This report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows why tackling child poverty is a difficult.

Some extracts:
- There was a small rise in poverty amongst families with children. As with overall poverty, this was not statistically significant, but it is the second year that child poverty has risen.
- Between 2006–07 and 2010–11, child poverty needs to fall by an average of 300,000 per year to meet the government’s targets. Although Budget 2008 announced a £0.9 billion package of measures to reduce child poverty, additional spending of £2.8 billion will be required to have a 50:50 chance of meeting the target.
- Child poverty has risen slightly since 2004–05 using income-based indicators, but it has fallen using the government’s new combined low-income–material deprivation indicator over the same period. Our own indicator of relative material deprivation is unchanged since 2004–05, showing that the living standards of poor families with children have risen since 2004–05 but have not caught up with those of richer families with children.
- Levels of material deprivation generally fall as incomes rise, but children in households with less than 40% of median income – so-called ‘severe’ poverty – are, on average, less deprived than those in households with between 40% and 60% of median income.
- Children in a working lone-parent family are less likely to be in income poverty than those in a one-earner couple family, but they are more likely to be in poverty using a material deprivation indicator. Also, they tend to have higher levels of deprivation than children in a one-earner couple family with similar levels of equivalised income.
- Families with children and disabled adults are less likely to be in income-based poverty than those without disabled adults, presumably because many receive disability-related additions to state benefits. However, they are more likely to be in material deprivation poverty