The real cost-of-living-crisis: Five million British children 'sentenced to life of poverty thanks to welfare reforms'

[ttosca]

Five million children in Britain could be “sentenced to a lifetime of poverty” by 2020 because of welfare reforms, according to research from Save the Children.

Cuts to benefits, the rising cost of living and years of flat wages have created a “triple whammy” for children, the charity said. It argues that children have borne the brunt of the recession in Britain, and now represent the “face of poverty” in the UK.

Policies such as the “bedroom tax” combined with the slashing of tax credits and council tax relief mean “the social safety net no longer acts as a sufficient backstop for poor families”, claims the Save the Children report.

Soaring food prices and childcare costs have also hit families, with the cost of food rising by 19 per cent when compared with other goods between 2007 and 2011. A nursery place for a child under two cost 77 per cent more last year than it did a decade ago.

A significant proportion of families across England – as high as 28 per cent in London – are skipping meals in a bid to make ends meet. And in many areas, more than one in 10 families cannot afford to buy children new shoes when they need them.

cont'd

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-real-costoflivingcrisis-five-million-british-children-face-life-of-poverty-thanks-to-welfare-reforms-9442061.html

Where's the EU legislation to help with this issue?

So depressing.

This bit is important too:

'Work “has ceased to become a sufficient solution to poverty for families with children”, the report warns. Two-thirds of children in poverty now live in working households, a rise of 20 per cent since 2003.

The study, A Fair Start for Every Child, was undertaken by Landman Economics and added projected social security cuts to existing Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates. “The UK remains one of the most unfair countries in the developed world – the lottery of birth still determines millions of children’s chances in life,” it warns. And by 2020 child poverty could “be around the highest ever recorded in the UK... the highest for a generation. The face of poverty in the UK will be that of a child, usually within a working family.” '

So if these children are in working families, what more can the families do for themselves?

Does the fact that this is still a problem in one of the richest countries in the world mean that society actually thinks it's acceptable? Because if it isn't, then we need to change it. And that means electing a government that will ask the richer members of society to contribute more and make employers pay a living wage. Or is there some other way?

Child poverty has repercussions all the way down the line, and I can't see how it's going to get better by itself.

It has been that way for a long time - I taught for a decade, and the poorest families always had at least one parent working. Those fully on benefits did ok - always had new clothes, shoes, pocket money, xmas presents etc. It was always the working parents who couldn't afford new shoes until payday, who passes on hand-me-downs until they had holes in (and beyond), who didn't give their children breakfast because there wasn't the money for it. They couldn't pay for childcare either, and 8 year olds would take themselves home to an empty house, get up on their own and get themselves to school in the morning. There are obviously more of these families now, but the very poorest were always in work.

Is the Save the Children’s Report looking backward, not forward, with limited data and pessimistic future assumptions?

Looking to put aside the political motives of the report to both shock and blame welfare reforms, we need to look at how we got here and try to understand why Save the Children’s interpolation shows such a high increase up until 2020, when the UK having been in the worst recession for 80-years is now in the strongest recovery and jobs growth of all the major economies.

Firstly it appears that this report by the Save the Children researchers accepts the Institute for Fiscal Studies CURRENT figure of 3.5 children in poverty – but then predicts there will be an increase to 5 million in 2020 – surveying just 1,500 children plus aged eight to 16 and more than 5,000 parents, focusing on the lowest income groups.*

Secondly, and is not made clear in the link or posts, the charity defines living in poverty as having a family income of less than £17,000 a year.

Next as Save the Children use 2007 to 2011 for their 19% rise in food stat and 2003 to 2013 for their costs of under two-year olds childcare/nursery rising 77%, going on to BLAME the current coalition for “ the bedroom tax” for causing children’s poverty, lets look at the state of the State’s housing for the poor, RESULTING in the coalitions effort to free up unused bedrooms.

Shelter (2009); The housing crisis in numbers – and the need for spare bedrooms, never mind homes.
england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/the_housing_crisis/what_is_the_housing_crisis.

• Over 1.7 million households (around 5 million individuals) are currently waiting for social housing

• 7.4 million homes in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard

• 1.4 million children in England live in bad housing. [3]

• In 2008/09, 654,000 households in England were overcrowded. [4]

• The number of new households is increasing faster than the number of house builds.

Maybe someone can tell me how the cost on a family FOR BEDROOMS NOT USED, to encourage those homes to be released for the 1.7 million households, with MILLIONS of children either WAITING for a home or in BAD housing, causes more poverty than freeing up used bedrooms within those homes for larger families?

Looking forward are Save the Children assuming that the UK will AGAIN have similar open door migration, putting pressure on jobs and pay rates for the indigenous population and the housing shortage due to economic immigration and failure to build enough home – together with little change from such a deep and long recession, when even a mild one can lower earnings and levels of poverty?

Are they also assuming that raising the start rate of tax to £10,500, a government finally doing something about the lack of social homes, and new job creation due to businesses now investing more and higher pay rates as the labour market tightens, will not REDUCE child poverty as the recession and huge LOSS of economic output/jobs that began in 2008, is behind us?

Or are they just assuming Labour will get back in power in 2015, who failed during in the 10-years to 2007 to make the right spending decisions e.g. homes, and in times of plenty missed their own poverty target?

Do you know what? I don't care who's to blame - I just want people to stop focussing on scoring political points and do something about it.

Successive governments obviously think child poverty is a price worth paying, both to get people to vote for them and to keep their wealthy backers happy.

You can argue till the cows come home about the figures. All you have to do is take a stroll down the road into a deprived area and look into a few windows. Would you want your children to live like that?

But it's easier, and more attractive to voters, to punish the poor, rather than the greedy. Nothing changes.

I am reading an interesting book at the moment called 'How children succeed' and it details studies about the link between success in education, salary, job etc and childhood. One of the major studies on the book focuses on childhood poverty. It shows that children born in poverty do worse on tests and function skills not because of levels of intelligence or that they haven't been 'taught' well but rather that they have higher stress levels and therefore cannot cope well with executive function tests.

The consequences of childhood poverty are so far reaching and it makes me beyond angry and frustrated that so many people in power seem not to care

Governments can only do so much, and it seems to me the lines of where ‘parenting’ starts and ends seem ever more blurred with every new fangled report.

Governments should just be mandated to provide it’s citizens with a sustainable economy, jobs, taxes as low as they can be, social mobility, all the schooling from the cradle it needs for individuals to help themselves, and all the other ‘nice’ things society expects, that a country can afford without paying a shed load more than the £52 billion in national debt interest charges (that currently comes out of our annual budget)..

A government than does not plan for the effects mass economic immigration, leaves it’s multi cultural unemployed festering on welfare dependency as the number of available social housing fell, and legislates longer pub opening hours, the declassification of soft drugs and was planning for casinos in every town before someone saw sense, is NOT doing it’s duty regarding the welfare of the State or it’s people.

Is it any wonder the UK already has the fattest, most drunk, drugged up AND pregnant youth in Europe?

So government’s, despite Solopower1’s dismissal, can also make social matters far worse FOR WHICH THERE IS NO ‘FLICK’ OF A SWITCH TO CORRECT; as society cannot quickly re-adjust to the economic, social and housing effects of 2.5 million migrants that came in over such a short time – together with the serious indigenous problems we already had – which feeds on itself in a downward social spiral until something is done about it.

Once the State has got to this state, it is beyond party policy gimmicks and soundbites for votes that amount to reallocating cabins on a sinking Titanic. the UK government HAS TO GET BACK TO BASICS; we need a thriving Private Sector to create jobs, a plan for private builders to REALLY build 200,000 new homes plus a year, a plan to fund new Social Housing, an education system that provides our children with an education fit for the workplace, so we don’t need economic migrants for UK jobs etc etc etc.

Meanwhile ‘the people’ have to help themselves and theirs; if their children don’t have shoes but they smoke and/or drink and have the latest large LED TV, look at themselves to start making changes.

Maybe try and prepare their children for school (and work) better; so that when children start their education, which is so important to their, and this country’s, future, isn’t at an immediate disadvantage to the rest of the children in the class who have been read to often, know their name, and have basic toilet skills.

If both government and the people do what is right, we can get out of this mess and give more help to those people that really need it, as continually blaming any government that in 2015 will have £1,400,000,000,000 (£1.4 trillion) in Nation Debt to help ‘solve’ all our problems, can only lead to perpetual disappointment, even if Mr Farage is running the country. lol

isitme, do you think you could drop the lazy stereotyping and stop assuming that families living in poverty are 'bad'? They are in highly stressful circumstances and those stresses make it much harder for them and their children to do all sorts of things.

FWIW the government's goal is not full employment. They deliberately aim for less than full employment to stop employees becoming too powerful and demanding better wages and conditions - otherwise described as 'wage inflation'.

And as for 'governments can only do so much' - many of these problems are caused by government policies. They need to stop punishing the poor for being poor and making their lives harder.

The bedroom tax has nothing to do with freeing up social housing, that's an excuse. It doesn't do it. It's not really designed to do it. It's just punishing the victims - if they really wanted to stop the housing benefit bill going upwards, they'd build more houses and bring down rents and prices.

It's totally ideological, imo. Either the govt believes in social justice or it doesn't. This one doesn't, and, worse, actually benefits from social injustice, q.e.d.

How many hundreds of years do you need, Isitmebut, to prove that governments have a vested interest in keeping the poor poor? If they didn't, they would have solved it by now.

Get the bankers/financiers/tax evaders and avoiders to pay back some of the money they owe and watch the national debt shrink. Stop subsidising private companies and lining landlords' pockets with taxpayers' money; instead of huge prestige building projects and transport systems designed to get those who already have jobs to work more quickly, invest in social housing. For starters. Then the government can say it really does want things to change.

Solopower1 …. I don’t have to go back 100 years to look as social mobility, financing wars and other reasons why the poor were poor, but it would be a particular stupid government that would rather pay out welfare/benefits to the multitudes rather than have their tax receipts with a £100 billion overspend and currently, £1.3 trillion of national debt that gets paid off by economic growth/tax receipts, or a shed load of new taxes.

Re your other ‘wish list’ that didn’t include the ££hundreds of billions we CHOSE to spend on a fat Quangocracy and other waste instead of lowering taxes for the poor and building homes and infrastructure e.g. replace aging train lines and nuclear power stations.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1983467-UK-Energy-Policy-Price-scandal-outages-due

Re banks, do you have any idea how much taxes investment banking has paid into the UK exchequer since the 1970’s and prior to the financial crash, it was between £60-£100 bil a year, which Brown counted on to cover his fat government spending, that when stopped, produced the biggest ANNUAL budget deficit in Europe here, of £157 billion in 2010.

Furthermore, few countries ‘nationalised’ banks, and their stock prices has since multiplied, while ours has not reached our purchase price – who’s fault was it encouraging bank lending and then part nationalising our so over leveraged banks, in such a state due to excess lending e.g. mortgages including Buy To Let, to compensate for lack of State building?

Re Landlords, it was a Labour/Brown policy (see below in the edam post), why else would they have sat back, not built, spent the money elsewhere, as a few million new citizens came in – they thought they were being clever letting the private sector pick up the tab, why else lower Capital Gains Tax to a tapered low of 10%, to rise to just 18% before Brown left office?

Re Social Housing to be built now we are bust, yup they have started from a low base, and already have built more in 4-years, than Labour did in 13-years.
www.gov.uk/government/news/extra-borrowing-powers-for-councils-to-build-10000-affordable-homes

Re Tax evaders, yup the Coalition is doing that, as the rich pay more taxes under them than Labour, despite their political gimmick raising the top rate up to 50%, and raised next to nothing as those not wanting to finance incompetent government by paying well over half their income (inc N/I), used tax planning to reduce their bills e.g. investing in pensions.

“HMRC crackdown yields record £23.9bn in additional tax”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27576626

Edamsavesthe day …… I am no more stereotyping the poorest in society than you would be, intimating that the poorest in society have no options in life other than accept welfare dependency.

Personally I think it rather cynical that people think ANY politician looks to join parliament to ‘punish the poor’, but totally agree with you that many government policies brought us to where we are, as they took the wrong social decisions when money was plentiful. And now the problems were made worse, they have to be sorted out with a huge annual deficit and accumulating national debt.

Re ‘full employment’ and whatever the definition, I totally disagree with you on your theory; our annual national spending, never mind reducing our nation’s debts, is totally FUNDED by Private Sector businesses/employment and the taxes they pay – and while wage inflation’ can be an economic problem, historically when it feeds through into price rises, the Bank of England puts up interest rates to cool down the economy.

Now with your 'keep down the poor' view you could argue that the last government encouraged immigration to dilute the labour pool and resulting in lower rates of pay.

Whereas I would speculate that they were desperate to bring in a foreign work force to BOOST government tax receipts/consumer spending (which feeds through to a higher GDP), to cover the huge government spending increases from 2001 to 2008. As if this ‘quick (but lasting) fix’ was not the main reason for that policy, that waved through twice as many NON Europeans as EU citizens they had little control over, I can’t see ANY benefit to a UK in 2004, already chronically short of homes and a large indigenous multi cultural unemployment figure e.g. 580,000 unemployed 16-24 year olds, which was to rise to just under 1 million by the 2010 General Election.

Regarding the so called ‘bedroom tax’, so called by Labour to deflect from their social and housing incompetence. Look at those Shelter figures I provided further above, and I’m sure I recollect that another report said that the availability of social homes FELL 10% under them, as the population GREW a couple of million – so no one can argue in a national emergency we did not NEED more bedrooms (especially those that were not being used), whether the policy was too ‘blunt’ and would not provide enough bedrooms, is another matter.

If the Coalition wanted to ‘punish victims’ and bring in revenue as you suggested, they wouldn’t have tried to freeze Council Tax for this 5-year parliament and instead carried on putting it up like Labour, who in 13-years put it up over 110%.

Labour encouraged private landlords to compensate for their lack of money for social housing and immigration policy, by discouraging private pension saving in their first year, letting bank lending off the leash and not building the homes THEIR OWN REPORT TOLD THEM TO BUILD - that COMBINATION saw mortgage lending go from £21billion in 1997 to £115billion in late 2007 and the average price of a home go from £73,000 in 1997 to £232,000 in early 2008 – and as the costs of private homes go up, so must the rents to give the landlord a return on their investment.
"The (2004) Barker review: key points"
www.theguardian.com/money/2004/mar/17/business.housing

FYI the Coalition has built more social housing in a bust economy over 5-years, than Labour did through the pre bust boom and beyond, in 13- years. Legislation to bring down rents regardless of landlord costs will get Private landlords to sell, just as they have become the LARGEST provider of rented properties – so what is Labour’s back up plan to replace private rented homes, if they don’t want State controls like 3-years tenancy terms and just SELL?.
www.gov.uk/government/news/extra-borrowing-powers-for-councils-to-build-10000-affordable-homes

Ellisisland - agreed, and until/unless they do something that improves the lives of children, all the social problems are simply perpetuated.

You know when a government cares because things get better when they are in power. If they don't, then they either don't care, or are ineffectual. All governments care about certain sectors of society. This government does not care about poor children. End of.

Solopower1 "End of"…. In 1997, did the UK Conservatives hand over the same banking, economic, deficit, debt, energy, education standard, immigration, jobless and homeless crisis, as they inherited in 2010???

This was typical of where all the money went over 13-years, by choice, instead of social projects and infrastructure.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

www.taxpayersalliance.com/economics/2009/09/new-book-reveals-the-total-cost-of-gordon-browns-mishandling-of-the-economy-as-3-trillion-or-3000000.html

I know Labour and their voters come what may have red rose tinted spectacles, but if any of them believe that the Labour policies by design over 13-years, with a honking great parliamentary majority and £trillions to spend - show that Labour are the caring and ‘in touch’ party for CAUSING what came in-between 1997 and 2010, rather than the coalition doing the best they can to fix it – then what future will our grandchildren’s children have if the Labour party is once again let loose in government.

After 13-years in power and the government that caused those ‘changes’ from 1997 to 2010, ask yourself how many detailed SOLUTIONS the government of the day put in their 2010 General Election manifesto?

The truth is, after getting the UK further in debt on throwing good money after fat State bad, a 2010 Labour government would have eventually made deeper cuts than the Coalition, whether the markets no longer buying our debt, or the IMF (they called out in 1976) forced them to.

“Labour to substantially cut benefits bill if it wins power in 2015”
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/21/labour-to-cut-benefits-bill-2015
“Labour will cut the benefits bill "quite substantially" and more effectively than the Tories if it wins power in 2015, the shadow work and pensions secretary said on Tuesday”

But of course when Labour 'screws the people' by reducing the £157 bil annual deficit they left, they are ‘in touch’ with them.

Parents are the ones with the ultimate responsibility for their children. If children are being raised in poverty than blame the parents first, then the government and other factors. It isn't the governments role to micromanage people's lives for them.

This

Yes, yes, yes this

Let's not forget we're discussing relative poverty here, people.

You know, the perverse sort whereby your friend's/neighbour's/relative's lottery win somehow makes you "poorer".

People in genuinely poor countries must look at us and not know whether to laugh or cry.

How did such a country, that once commanded such respect and fear around the globe, fall so low and hate success, independence, self-respect?

I'm surprised that you want people to fear you, TrueGent. And no-one I know hates success, independence and self-respect.

I've been into houses with no beds or chairs, curtains or carpets and no food in the cupboards. I'd say that was pretty absolute.

But whether you believe that or not - why would you want children to live in even 'relative' poverty? Especially when they don't need to?

And TucsonGirl, do you blame parents for being poor even when they are working full time and doing everything they can to improve their family's standard of living? How do you think that making rich people pay more taxes or providing free health care is 'micromanaging' poor people?

How many people that work full time and are doing everything they can to improve their families standard of living actually are in the position of having no beds or chairs, food in the cupboard etc?

There will always be "relative" poverty as long as poverty is defined as poverty is defined as it currently is. Making rich people pay more taxes? I think the current tax rates are quite fair. Free health care? There is no such thing. It all has to be paid for. The NHS is a good thing but people are guilty of being alarmists about any kind of reform, which is badly needed as it is very inefficiently run with a hell of a lot of waste.

People need to think about what they are doing when they choose (and make no mistake about it, having children is exactly that in western society in 2014) to have children. Do you have what it takes to be a parent? If yes, go ahead, If not sure, go away and think about it some more. Expecting the government to help out for a while during troubled times is one thing but expecting the government to pick up the bill from day one is another thing entirely.

"How did such a country, that once commanded such respect and fear around the globe, fall so low and hate success, independence, self-respect?"

New Labour?

I am sure I am probably going to be damned to eternity for this. But surely the point regarding so many children living in poverty in the UK is not a welfare issue. Perhaps, just perhaps, the real issue is that people should resist having children until they have attained an income sufficient to support them? Why should it fall to the wealthier members of society to pay for the children of the poorer members of society?

I am surprised that people on this thread are denying that children are living in poverty. The evidence is there. Go and have a look round a rough area near you. See how comfortable you feel walking down some streets. Then try to imagine what it must be like to live there. Do that without thinking about who is to blame. Just see it.

I can understand people not believing statistics or politicians, and only reading newspapers that put forward a particular point of view. So why not prove it to yourself?

Also poverty, relative or absolute, is not just about money. it's about people treating you with contempt and hostility. It's about having low self-esteem and no hope. It's often about being ill.

If you are living without hope, you have nothing to lose. Tbh, I'm surprised that more people who grow up in such grinding, abject poverty don't go off the rails. Because if I were in their shoes, I'd be pretty angry.

All the above worse with this current government? as in bedroom tax and welfare reforms -yes, all for dealing with benefit cheats but the genuine in need (disabled etc) should not suffer because of them.

This business about children deserving to be poor. Yes, some parents are feckless, reckless, stupid and uncaring - surely that's a fact. But do we then just abandon their children?

And think how important luck is in our lives. It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to do a few what ifs. What if my parents had split up? A child can go from comfortably off to the breadline in a week when that happens; s/he might have to leave her/his home, change schools and friends ... What if one of my parents (the main breadwinner, maybe) had died when I was a child, or gone to prison? What if one of them was an invalid? How would the other have managed? Would I have had to stay away from school or get a job to help out? What if all our possessions had been swept away in a flood, or our family home had been gambled away at cards (as happened in my father's family)?

Some people are just terribly unlucky in life. Do they deserve to be poor?

No doubt there are people who have suffered all of the above and more, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, etc. But there must be many more who simply have not been able to recover.