To be sad 32% of children near me are in poverty?

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www.nomorekidsinpoverty.uk/ how about you?

How can this be acceptable??

14% where I live but 40% where I grew up. Neither figure surprises me. I live in a more affluent area now.

But if poverty is defined as a %age then we are always going to have some % in poverty however rich the country becomes. We will never eradicate it as such.

As others have said the definition is not very helpful. Theoretician and EssentialHummus explain exactly why the "mean" defintion is pointless. Others have pointed out the unhelpful "mainstream society" categorisation.

By this definition I am in poverty. We have a nice house but none of the other things are really affordable. According to the (annoying) map over 15% of kids are in poverty in my area. I would not have said so but it depends where they draw the boundary exactly. This is a rich-ish London Borough - but with a couple of big council estates.

Does it really matter though? As long as we do what we can to make sure people have homes and food and heat and education - do the stats really help? I would say not in this case.

seeyou is using wikipedia's definition, but I've looked through the site, and nowhere do they actually define what they are using as indicators.

In the report itself, they talk about making adjustments to various pieces of data, but their baseline is using the numbers of families who receive out-of-work benefits or in receipt of WTC with an income of lower than 60% of the median. (This is a close paraphrase). They say that this over-represents the number of unworking poor, and under-represents the working poor, so figures are adjusted up or down to compensate for this. There is no information on how this has been done.

In short- if this was an academic paper, it wouldn't be published. If a student produced and submitted a report like this, it would receive a failing grade as is. CPAG are an action group with a specific agenda, which names Osborne who "wants to take even more from the poorest families in your area by cutting tax credits which help working families."

Child poverty is a problem in this country - but this report allows no-one to have confidence in its figures (who was it who said there are lies, damned lies, and statistics?!) and the use of the Osborne example is emotive but imo undermines what ought to be a very important issue through cheap political point scoring.

Blue, the stats matter only because they are using them incorrectly to manipulate an argument. People love being able to quote figures - but if they have been "adjusted" as the report says, in a non-transparent way (they don't disclose the process or methodology of this process) they are meaningless.

To my mind, it obscures the fact that whilst there is very little absolute poverty in this country, the relative poverty is a serious issue, particularly when it affects children.

23% in my area but I know that it is much higher in my immediate area but the constituency is balanced out by a much more affluent area about 10 miles away. Out of interest I also put in my parents postcode, they came out at 12%, their immediate area is very affluent but again balanced out by a town and the outskirts of a city which come under the same constituency but are significantly poorer areas. Both areas come under the NW.

The IFS has a better methodology explanation here of relative poverty and household income, in their study
www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

However, it only talks about your position, and doesn't let you see the wider stats for your postcode.

A postie and a nurse live in London. They're both in their 50's and bought 30 years ago. They've paid off their mortgage and their asset is worth 550k (they live in Lewisham)

But because they only have £30k coming in they live in (according to the study) relative poverty.

Total balls.

Relative poverty does mean something. To the younger generation who can't afford to buy or securely rent. Who spend 60% of their income on rent and can't afford a holiday.

But those who bought in the South east who don't have large incomes but do have massive assets are not poor.

And it's generational too.

hefzi did you read the methodology document on the site? I must admit that I haven't studied it closely to see how it stands up to scrutiny, but it certainly does appear to discuss in some detail the merits of the underlying datasets, the justifications for making adjustments to them, and the methodology.

It's certainly wrong to suggest that the methodology isn't disclosed since it took me only a couple of clicks to download the methodology document! I'd you didn't see this then you didn't look very hard.

If relative poverty is based purely on income (sorry I can't read the document), rather than income and outgoings, surely it's a nonsense?

A small income is fine if you have one kid and no mortgage.
Similarly, a larger income might still leave very little if you have three kids and huge rent to pay.

Interestingly, I was recently in India where we were told that the poverty level is set at having enough money coming in to feed everyone in the family unit three basic meals per day (rice and dahl).

A postie and a nurse live in London. They're both in their 50's and bought 30 years ago. They've paid off their mortgage and their asset is worth 550k (they live in Lewisham)

But they can only realise their wealth by selling up and moving somewhere with cheaper housing. If all that matters is money in the bank then good, but if friends/ neighbours/ family are more important they are stuck there.

They could downsize but a flat in london isn't that much cheaper (or not to allow a rich lifestyle of cruises and sports cars)

I'm not saying they should realise their wealth, just that they are not relatively poor

People with assets of half a million aren't poor

And they're included in the poverty statistics because it's based on income and not assets

Which is just daft

It's relative poverty though, nothing like absolute poverty where there is no shelter and little food like Africa etc
They also class not having a holiday as being in poverty, which is simply outrageous. Since when did that kind of luxury and non essential become an indicator of poverty?
People don't help themselves. It's simple enough to understand that the more children the less money to go round and not earning a salary means less for the household.

Autumnleaves, I wanted to say that but wasn't brave enough

I think our version of poverty is a hell of a lot different to the type of poverty you get in places like Africa, some parts of India and places like Mexcico, where people don't have a roof over their heads, don't have shoes on their feet and don't have enough to eat.

49.1% around my old home in East London? 31.5% in the West Leeds where I grew up :(

12.4 % where I am - North Yorkshire. Sounds about right to me. Where we live doesn't seem to have the extremes that some places do.

Is there a modern definition of what constitutes poverty?

My Grandfather grew up in a very large family in an area of the country that was fairly poor anyway. When his father, the main breadwinner, lost his job, he remembers there not being enough heating in the house (no coal), shoes with holes in (often went round barefoot) and hardly any food on the table. He remembers being constantly hungry and cold.
That seems to me to be real poverty
Hunger
Lack of furniture in the house
No warm clothing /shoes
Lack of proper health care (there was no NHS, and doctors were expensive)
They didn't have family allowance.
There was very little help.

I live in a deprived area and I have yet to see a child walking around barefooted thank God and all children now have access to health care, school meals, Social services.

I'm genuinely struggling to understand how they get these figures.

There are a lot of people who are poor. But 'poverty'?

Very definitely we are talking about relative poverty here. It matters though as those in relative poverty still have worse health and social outcomes than those who don't.

I and my DS would be considered as "in poverty" and he thinks we are poor . I don't consider is to be in poverty though, he goes to school with a good breakfast inside him, has a home cooked meal every night and lunch in school. He also has a few thing others don't have due to generous grandparents and relatives.

We haven't had a holiday for over five years if you only think of paid holidays. We have managed to visit my in laws in Wales every year though and have a few days with them and go to the beaches etc. It's what you make if what you have and those in real poverty won't be able to do that,

Right first question to ask who is sponsoring the website this link is taking us to because it clearly is atacking George Osborne - so a left wing organisation I assume.

Second question is where are the statistics coming from?

Third question is what defines poverty? This is clearly RELATIVE POVERTY we are talking about. I am in relative poverty compared to some people but some other people are in relative poverty compared to me.

The 'they all have Sky boxes' accusation merely is pointing out we do not have ABSOLUTE POVERTY in the UK.That is why so many economic migrants want to come here. Compared to their country even people on benefits here are extremely well off. The concept of relative poverty was inventrd by Labour once the welfare state had been established but the problem is many people on benefits are relatively better off than people who are working. Pensioners better off than people working and paying tax to fund the pensioners retirement.

This us where the RELATIVE POVERTY measure has led us to. Totally messed up tax and welfare system.

Thats the debate we need to have.

mine is not that bad as it takes the whole constituency into account. this starts in the inner city and radiates out into the well off suburbs. near me, well, not so good. there are only 8 children in our postcode full time. all of whom live in 2 bed flats. 50%minimum are rented.

Ghoul
My old house was the same as yours at 49.1% (Poplar and Limehouse?)

This website seems bollocks, I cant find anywhere where they define what constitutes poverty.

hefzi - you are right - in that sense they do matter.

Agree with other posters who say outgoings should count as should regional differences. Some people have money but don't spend it wisely so the kids are worse off than they should be.

The poor kid is the kid who doesn't have decent clothing or food, who lives in substandard accommodation, who never goes out, who does not have access to books/ internet/ travel etc.

Actual income, whilst a factor is very far from the whole story.

While we focus only on income, blame "the Government" for everything and do not "judge" poor parenting, these children will not escape.

43.71 where I am (think my DS would count as living in poverty: single mum on benefits) and to be honest Im not surprised. Despite years of regeneration in the area none of it has actually filtered down to the people who need it most.

Genuine question, how do they class poverty? What are the parameters?

42% near me in central London. I would have counted as one a few years ago as a single mum on benefits, but luckily got married to DH who is on a good wage. Seems that marriage is the only way out of poverty for women in my situation, my friends who have tried to work their way out of it are only ending up in worse situations due to tax credits being cut and higher rental costs.