The share of children living in absolute poverty in the UK has risen by its highest rate for 30 years, official data shows, triggering outcry from charities which called on the government to urgently overhaul its welfare policy.
Some 25 per cent of children in 2022-23 were living below the poverty line, up from 23.8 per cent the previous year, representing the largest annual increase since records began in 1994-95, according to Department for Work and Pensions figures on Thursday.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said the data was “shocking” and that anything short of scrapping the two-child limit and increasing child benefits would be “a betrayal of Britain’s children”.
Campaigners and economists have been calling for the ruling Conservative government to scrap its two-child limit policy, which means that families who claim universal credit or child tax credit cannot do so for a third or subsequent child.
The data also showed that income fell last year for all but the top 20 per cent of earners, with the largest reductions in the poorest households.
Sam Ray-Chaudhuri, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank, said: “Given the double whammy of Covid and the cost of living crisis, it may not come as a shock that this parliament is on course to be one of the worst ever for growth in household incomes.”
Material deprivation, which measures individuals’ ability to afford a range of everyday goods and services, has also risen compared with before the pandemic.
In 2022-23, some 8 per cent of people aged 65 and over lived in material deprivation, up from 6 per cent in 2019-20, the first recorded increase in almost a decade.
Absolute poverty has been broadly falling for decades, as living standards have improved. However, the data signalled a change in direction with the share of children below the poverty line increasing by 318,000 to more than 3.6mn.
Poverty rates are expected to rise further as more families are affected by the two-child limit, which only applies to children born after April 2017.
While other policies can have an indirect impact on child poverty, removing the two-child limit was crucial to “shift the dial”, said Jon Sparkes, chief executive of charity Unicef UK.
“If we want to have a greater impact quickly, then it’s the big policy decisions around transfers that are important,” he added.
Alison McGovern, Labour’s shadow employment and social security minister, blamed the Conservatives for the “horrifying” statistics and said her party intended to fix this failure by “growing the economy”.
She said that Labour would build more affordable housing, reduce school uniform costs and provide breakfast clubs in every primary school.
Children were twice as likely to fall below the poverty line as pensioners, according to the data. Absolute poverty is defined as having income below 60 per cent of the inflation-adjusted average in 2010-11 after housing costs.
Britons aged 65 or older have seen a steep fall in deprivation in recent decades as a result of targeted policies such as the triple-lock on pensions, which requires the government to raise the state pension each year at least in line with earnings.
Mel Stride, secretary of state for work and pensions, acknowledged that the past few years had been “tough” and said the government had provided cost-of-living support worth an average of £3,800 per household, preventing 1.3mn people from falling into poverty last year.
He added that in April the government would go further by uprating benefits and pensions and extending its household support fund.
This post was originally published on Financial Times
