Government ‘on course’ to meet child poverty target
The Government is now on course to meets its first target for reducing child poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. But the latest research warns that longer-term goals may be harder to achieve.
The projections by researchers at Cambridge university and the London School of Economics – taking into account recent tax credits and benefit changes – have suggested that by next spring 1.3 million children will have been lifted out of relative poverty, which is measured as households with less than 60% of the national mid-point income.
That is largely due to increased employment and above-inflation increases in some benefits, and means that the Government would meet its target of reducing child poverty by a quarter since 1997.
Holly Sutherland, director of the Microsimulation Unit at Cambridge university and co-author of the report, said that the reduction would be a ‘significant achievement’, but suggested that with the UK enjoying very low unemployment, future progress would be less dramatic.
‘It is also clear that more help will need to be directed towards poorer households if the Government is to reach its longer-term targets,’ she said. ‘Staying on track to halve child poverty by 2010 will be increasingly hard to achieve and require substantially more redistribution of national income towards the poorest families.’
The Government’s ultimate goal is to eradicate child poverty ‘within a generation’.
However, there have also been concerns about the way poverty is measured, with an overall national increase in incomes serving to raise the poverty threshold. The result is that the actual reduction in child poverty by next year is likely to be around one million, according to today’s report.
Back in August the Child Poverty Action Group suggested that the Government might be about to miss its 2004 target. It claimed that rather than investing money in ‘gimmicks’ such as the new baby bond schemes that are designed to encourage parents to save, the Chancellor should give an extra £5 a week in tax credits to every child from a low income family.
