The proportion of children living in poverty — defined as below 60 per cent of median income — will rise from 19.3 per cent in 2010-1 to over 24 per cent by 2020.
According to new research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that is the certain result of changes in welfare benefits and cuts in real wages which are already underway.
The Child Poverty Act 2010, which the Tories did not then oppose, sets a legally-binding target to cut the percentage of children in poverty below 10% by 2020. The Financial Times (11 October) reports Government officials shrugging this off with comments that “money alone is not the solution to poverty” and that the targets are “arbitrary” and irrelevant and should be reconsidered.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times calculates that the average household will be in “fuel poverty”, on official definitions, by the next election in 2015, if energy bills continue to rise on present lines.
The rich are ruthlessly using the crisis to increase inequality and boost profits at the expense of the majority.
Comments
Relative poverty
Ah the wonders of 'relative poverty' - it ensures that the poor are always with us.
Most of us who are 55 plus will remember as a child living in a household with no fridge, bathroom, car, TV, or central heating. We didn't think of ourselves as being in poverty, perhaps because there wasn't a 'poverty industry' to tell us so.
No doubt this would now be regarded as 'absolute poverty' nervermind relative. Despite this upbringing none of my peers feels our life chances were damaged.
Demands from the left for the 'system' to be overthrown fall at the first hurdle as no-one can ever point to an example of a successful socialist state. It's like asking people to fly in a new aeroplane that is promised to be the fastest, safest and quietest, the only catch being that it has never flown before and none of the designers have ever designed one before.