UK child poverty rose last year as welfare cuts bite: thinktank

 

LONDON (Reuters) - The number of children living in poverty in Britain rose last year as the poorest families saw their incomes hit by welfare cuts, a think tank said, underscoring the challenge for the government as it tries to balance the public finances.

 

A fall in disposable income for the poorest 30 percent of households meant child poverty probably rose by 3 percent in 2017, according to the Resolution Foundation which focuses on issues faced by low-income families.

 

Inflation-adjusted incomes for middle-income and higher earning households grew, albeit only slowly, reflecting in part the jump in inflation triggered by the Brexit vote in 2016.

 

The Resolution Foundation -- which is chaired by a former Conservative Party minister -- said its child poverty figures measured the number of children living in families with income that was less than 60 percent of a typical household.

 

"It's vital that government and other policymakers understand the positive impact cash transfers have on low-income families," Adam Corlett, a Resolution Foundation analyst, said.

 

"The risk is that, unless the lessons of the past are learned, the future could spell squeezed incomes and further increases in child poverty."

 

In a report, the Resolution Foundation said child poverty had risen twice as fast since 2011 as official figures show.

 

However, the report also said that once all benefit income is accounted for, 25 percent of children are living in relative poverty, rather than official survey estimates of 30 percent.

 

(Writing by William Schomberg, editing by Andy Bruce)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-07-24

Wonder if they know what child "poverty" actually means looking back to when I was a kid..

7 minutes ago, transam said:

Wonder if they know what child "poverty" actually means looking back to when I was a kid..

Like when your parents had to rely on food banks to feed you?

3 minutes ago, transam said:

Wonder if they know what child "poverty" actually means looking back to when I was a kid..

Today

 

A child is classed as being in poverty if:

 

It does not have a smart phone, X-Box or some other gaming device, a laptop or computer, internet access, etc etc.

 

Poverty in the UK, do not make me laugh. Plenty of evidence of mutants being unfit parents, rather than poverty being an actual problem.

14 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Like when your parents had to rely on food banks to feed you?

We did have a tin of peaches for tea on Sunday's..We looked forward to Sunday's..But to be fair, mum and dad did grow a variety of fruit and veg in the garden and mum made some really scrummy stuff from it. Perhaps we were posh, we were the only family in the street with a television, but then mum and dad both worked..?

Regional inequality in the UK is the worst in Western Europe

 

8 minutes ago, transam said:

Do your many poor families have iPhones and the connection fees...Home grub deliveries, parents can buy dope to smoke even though they are on the dole...

 

I maybe an old guy but I do know what the present day folk have..Which is very different to when I was a kid....When I was a kid FOOD on the table was number one and paying the rent. We had NHS which took care of us...You should get living priorities in order before you take pokes about what l could do if l return to the UK..?

The fact that you have to ask how poor families choose to spend their income suggests that you do not know where their money goes.

2 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

The fact that you have to ask how poor families choose to spend their income suggests that you do not know where their money goes.

It was a rhetorical question ??

6 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

The fact that you have to ask how poor families choose to spend their income suggests that you do not know where their money goes.

I have been POOR, I KNOW...........

1 minute ago, transam said:

I have been POOR, I KNOW...........

My point was about contemporary poverty, not from decades before. TV shows like Benefits Street likes to paint a picture of profligate and reckless people continuously making poor choices in life because it makes for good ratings, but how representative are such shows of the reality of poverty nowadays? No doubt there are people leeching off the system, but I highly doubt they are significant in number.

1 minute ago, The Renegade said:

???

 

Rather than reading, and then ranting over a headline, especially a headline in the Independent.

 

Ricketts has been on the rise for a long time in the UK

 

From 2010

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8570542.stm

 

Biggest cause of Ricketts ?

 

Lack of Vitamin D.

Of course I will be called a liar but at primary school we were checked for Rickets and Flees...Oh, and if your balls jumped up and down....?

5 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

My point was about contemporary poverty, not from decades before. TV shows like Benefits Street likes to paint a picture of profligate and reckless people continuously making poor choices in life because it makes for good ratings, but how representative are such shows of the reality of poverty nowadays? No doubt there are people leeching off the system, but I highly doubt they are significant in number.

Now lets not into the Eastern European influx eh....?

8 hours ago, transam said:

Wonder if they know what child "poverty" actually means looking back to when I was a kid..

 

8 hours ago, The Renegade said:

 

 

Poverty in the UK, do not make me laugh. Plenty of evidence of mutants being unfit parents, rather than poverty being an actual problem.

Back in my town in greater Manchester there are a large element of "single female parents" whose parenting skills amount to taking their offsprings into the shopping areas buying them a pie or pastie for breakfast and telling them to "get it farking eaten as they are doing their head in" they are too idle to make anything remotely decent to eat at home yet can find money to feed them trash,a report yesterday highlighted child obesity is becoming a real and serious problem back in the UK.

Poverty.....they are having a laugh....money is easily found for drugs/alcohol or cigarettes....the "nanny state" has taken over....glad I,m out of it  

17 minutes ago, cmsally said:

Interesting they should use this as an example. A doctor friend was telling me about the increase in cases of rickets she sees in the UK. The worse cases are a combination of 2 things; being almost always indoors and the clothing of immigrant children which often covers the whole body. The combination of these 2 things has caused a huge increase and is mostly an urban phenomenon.

In addition, I think the rise in malnourishment is probably due to parents feeding their children an excess of processed/fast foods - rather than cooking proper meals.

 

I too came from a (relatively) poor family, but my mother wouldn't let us kids out of the house until we'd eaten our porridge breakfast - despite our complaints that we 'didn't like it', as we understandably wanted sugar-rich cereals.  A free school meal at lunch-time, and we all sat around the table for the evening, home-cooked meal - from the cheapest, but healthy ingredients. 

43 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

The fact that you have to ask how poor families choose to spend their income suggests that you do not know where their money goes.

 

Do you?

I particularly liked the way the foundation producing this report managed to 'get in a dig' about brexit! ?

 

1 hour ago, webfact said:

Inflation-adjusted incomes for middle-income and higher earning households grew, albeit only slowly, reflecting in part the jump in inflation triggered by the Brexit vote in 2016.

 

As a kid my family never had a lot of money, my dad grew veg and fruit and mother was a whizz at stretching things out, my parents neither drank or smoked.

By comparison many of the kids on the council estate who were classed as poor, got given 6 pence each evening to buy chips and then sit on the pavement outside the pubs to wait for their mum or dad, or both to finish drinking.

Poverty to me is kids who have no food, and no hope of any food anytime soon, extended bellies because of same, you want to see true poverty, visit somewhere like Africa

28 minutes ago, transam said:

Of course I will be called a liar but at primary school we were checked for Rickets and Flees...Oh, and if your balls jumped up and down....?

I very much doubt they checked the latter while you were in primary school, though I accept that might have been they excuse you were given.

5 minutes ago, dick dasterdly said:

In addition, I think the rise in malnourishment is probably due to parents feeding their children an excess of processed/fast foods - rather than cooking proper meals.

 

I too came from a (relatively) poor family, but my mother wouldn't let us kids out of the house until we'd eaten our porridge breakfast - despite our complaints that we 'didn't like it', as we understandably wanted sugar-rich cereals.  A free school meal at lunch-time, and we all sat around the table for the evening, home-cooked meal - from the cheapest, but healthy ingredients. 

Porridge?  We used to dream of porridge.  Best we could do was a cup of hot gravel washed down with battery acid.

Just now, Baerboxer said:

 

Do you?

No - that's the point. Any time there is a story about poverty in the uk, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be annecdotal posts about how there can be no poverty because everyone, apparently, has an iPhone and high speed broadband. Personally, I am not convinvced.

5 minutes ago, dick dasterdly said:

I particularly liked the way the foundation producing this report managed to 'get in a dig' about brexit! ?

 

 

For sure.

 

The UK was paradise before 23 June 2016 ??

 

There was no '' Poverty ''

There was no Foodbanks

There was no Ricketts

There was no homeless people

There was never any job losses

No business ever closed

There was no crime

There were no murders

 

Man alive ??

 

4 minutes ago, dick dasterdly said:

I particularly liked the way the foundation producing this report managed to 'get in a dig' about brexit! ?

 

 

Maybe because Brexit related inflation has increased poverty amongst the already poor?!

Well Chomper, I suggest you don't add words to my post, because I did not say there was no poverty in the UK.  And just to educate you a little bit, it is not necessary for there to be a famine for there to be no food.

3 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

No - that's the point. Any time there is a story about poverty in the uk, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be annecdotal posts about how there can be no poverty because everyone, apparently, has an iPhone and high speed broadband. Personally, I am not convinvced.

Try watching some fly on the wall UK police TV programs....

Just now, RuamRudy said:

No - that's the point. Any time there is a story about poverty in the uk, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be annecdotal posts about how there can be no poverty because everyone, apparently, has an iPhone and high speed broadband. Personally, I am not convinvced.

Of course there's poverty in the UK, but it's 'relative poverty' IMO.

 

Not that this is an excuse for various govts. cutting support to those most in need rather than tackling more important problems - e.g. tax avoidance by the wealthy.

2 minutes ago, transam said:

Try watching some fly on the wall UK police TV programs....

I did mention Benefits Street earlier - the rash of poverty porn shows presumably fills our innate need to feel both superior to some and accomplished in ourselves. But, again, how representative of a nation's poor can 30 minutes of edited television be?

Just now, RuamRudy said:

No - that's the point. Any time there is a story about poverty in the uk, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be annecdotal posts about how there can be no poverty because everyone, apparently, has an iPhone and high speed broadband. Personally, I am not convinvced.

 

Exactly. Some people earn very low wages and have to rely on social support for the families. Some work damned hard to try and ensure their children are provided with as much as possible. But others are less responsible. They smoke, drink, possibly do drugs, can't be bothered and are happy to sponge off others whilst always moaning they want more.

 

The social pressures of a consumer society are also now greater than ever and constantly increasing. 

 

There is child poverty in the UK for sure. But some are making things worse for themselves. Only the organizations that produce information criticizing the government don't like addressing or even mentioning that. 

 

When I went to junior school some class mates didn't have shoes. They were given old often pre-used gym pumps by the school. Some had few clothes and often wore the same things all week. Some of the parents who were a bit better off, and not much, would help. My mum always recycled all my old clothes giving them to others. Things were harder then - rented TV if you were lucky, rented washing machine and fridge if you were lucky, and most mums either didn't work or worked part-time so they could look after the kids as best they could.

 

Maybe UK political parties should address the wisdom of giving huge sums of foreign aid to countries like Pakistan so they can buy nice new Chinese fighter planes to go with their nuclear weapons rather than ensuring social equality at home.

2 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

No - that's the point. Any time there is a story about poverty in the uk, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be annecdotal posts about how there can be no poverty because everyone, apparently, has an iPhone and high speed broadband. Personally, I am not convinvced.

If the kids are malnourished , they should be buying food and not phones , saying that , I do beleive that the malnourishment is due to parents relying on the (more expensive ) fast food take-aways  .

    Child benefit alone should be enough to keep a kid well nourished

1 minute ago, RuamRudy said:

I did mention Benefits Street earlier - the rash of poverty porn shows presumably fills our innate need to feel both superior to some and accomplished in ourselves. But, again, how representative of a nation's poor can 30 minutes of edited television be?

Weeeeell, I have watched hours of fly on the wall stuff....But what I am good at is looking at stuff going on in the background of what l am watching.....Good stuff for me...

Could be a correlation in offshore tax avoidance schemes and the trillions sloshing around in it.