The scale and depth of child poverty

It is one of those aspirations that seems synonymous with New Labour – a bold plan to abolish child poverty by 2020 and halve the risk of poverty by 2010. It is an aim that is almost impossible to achieve because of the lack of political will to devote the economic resources needed to bring it about. Government is happy to pledge tens of billions of pounds to bail out the financial system, but it seems less prepared to meet their pledges on poverty with hard cash.

A new report from the Campaign to End Child Poverty makes for sober reading.

It claims that 174 parliamentary constituencies in Britain have 50 per cent or more children living in or on the brink of poverty.

And there are localities where child poverty is almost completely the norm. An estimated 98 per cent of children living in two zones in Glasgow Baillieston – Central Easterhouse and North Barlarnark and Easterhouse South – are either in poverty or in working families that are struggling to get by.

The poverty measure is built around the number of children in families who receive the maximum Child Tax Credit – a means-tested welfare benefit. The traditional measure of relative poverty is a family living below 60% of median income, net of housing costs

There is coverage of the new poverty research from the BBC - a hat tip to Penny Brooks for alerting me to the new report. In particular this audio-video report.