Child poverty is HOW much??

[UnquietDad]

here

Am I the only one a bit at the definition??

£346 a week for a family of two?

If you'd stopped me in the street and grabbed me by the lapels and said "What's child poverty??" and forced me to put a figure on it, I'd have probably said "living on about less than £150 a week."

Shows how much I know.

Also, a working poor family on that sum won't be entitled to full housing benefit or perhaps none at all.

I don't know, LB, but we are in the same boat as you.

LittleBella - the reason I posted this was that they spent about 20 minutes on it on C4 News tonight - had Chris Grayling for the Tories, Stephen Timms the Labour minister and Jenny Willott the LD spokesperson all discussing it.

The cut off for HB, council tax benefit etc. is incredibly low. Something like just over 8K

The cut off for Working Tax Credits is about £14,500. Gross.

Must be the first discussion about it in about 30 years and I've bloody missed it!

Your net wage on that sum is £11,692.

And, not eligible for council tax benefit, break take £1,000 off. Plus another £1,000 for utilities.

And this is before you pay rent, which you probably won't get HB for.

Now you're talking about a family who lives in poverty.

Really Expat?

It's Child Tax Credit that goes up to about £50K isn't it?

It's interesting that everyone gets very angry about benefits cheats, but nobody gets very angry about employers paying ludicrously low wages. There's no analysis about why wages bear no relation to the cost of living and why taxpayers have to subsidise low-paying employers with tax credits to begin with.

Sorry cross posted with your earlier post

Working tax credit cuts out well before that, LB.

and let's not forget, that child tax credit may not pay the entire cost of your childcare.

so you'll need to find a way to pay what it does not.

I'd expect jobs paying about £12-15K to be entry-level unskilled stuff but they're not - they're all stuff like admin requiring some office experience, CLAIT or NVQs etc.

Quite an eye-opener.

Child Tax Credit is only just over £10 a week when you get above c £20K salary though.

I am a lone parent and with one more child than given in the example in that article.

I get less than stated but would not consider my children to be living in poverty at all, no where near it infact.

It is also worth flagging up that that figure is the cut-off for poverty - there are about a million odd familes on less then that iirc. There are a lot of familes who won't touch working tax credit or housing benefit because they are concerned about the risk of overpayments.

That said the UK definition is in part a relative measure rather than an absolute one.

LittleBella 'It's interesting that everyone gets very angry about benefits cheats, but nobody gets very angry about employers paying ludicrously low wages. There's no analysis about why wages bear no relation to the cost of living and why taxpayers have to subsidise low-paying employers with tax credits to begin with.'

I keep bringing this up - but nobody listens and so i get branded as a lazy sloven sigh

We do not touch WTC because of an overpayment that put us £4000 in debt. The TCO acknowledged it was their mistake after a 7 month struggle and gave us £100 in compensation.

We have been unable to pay off the debt - it's all on credit cards or overdraft and we pay the min payment as that is what we can afford.

We are a working poor family, and my guess is that there is much, much hidden poverty among the working poor.

When most people here think of children in poverty, they think of people on benefits, perhaps living on council estates.

There is a vast percentage, however, probably growing, where the family is actually working.

I expect a large percentage among OAPs, too, many of whom would not or are unable to claim benefit or fill out the complex forms to do so.

Yes OAP poverty has risen hugely

You say it so much better than me, expat

Jeez! I get £131 a week & have to pay my £151 a week mortgage out of that. £271, I'd love that each week!

They interviewed a single mum of one on benefits on the news. She had something in the region of £130 to live on for food, L&H etc but all housing costs are paid for. That is defined as poverty, yes it is tight, but, don't shout she doesn't work, so its never going to be easy. If it was there would be no incentive to change the situation.

It's confusing when they banter around poverty income figures. Does it include all benefits, before housing costs and how can they predict the variable housing cost that families pay.

I wish for once they'd interview a working poor person on one of those shows.

Yes AAE that's what's so ridiculous about it. If you have £2000 coming in a month and your mortgage is £200 a month, you're rich. If you have £2000 coming in and your mortgage is £1200, you're poor.

It's absurd to exclude housing costs. Mind you they exclude them from inflation as well. If they didn't the official figure would be in the region of twelfty zillion billion hundred exty.

abouteve - it has been stated that people are often no better, and frequently much worse off when working. Now does your post still make sense?

I wonder why we get all these "I know a family on benefits and they've got a plasma TV/new car/holiday" kind of posts sometimes.

It's obvious from the kind of things being said here and elsewhere that people are genuinely struggling and in need, and yet people presumably aren't making these stories up for the hell of it. After all, I can think of two or three people I know who are supposedly poorer than us and yet have newer and nicer "stuff".

I suppose the answer is that these cases are people on the fiddle?... or just different priorities in life?...

Agree, it would make more sense but that's the media for you. It also pees me off that so many families are bordering on the poverty line when one parent is working and still has to rely on state benefits as employers won't pay a decent living wage for a decent weeks work.