
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundations (JRF) latest report analysing the scale of poverty in the UK, 22% of the population – 14.4 million people – were living in poverty in 2021/22. Most were adults of working age but 4.2 million were children. The analysis shows that four in 10 of the poorest families are in deep poverty – where they had an average income that was 59% below the poverty line, with this gap increasing by two-thirds over the past 25 years.
The JRF also found that families with three or more children have higher rates of poverty - 43% of children in large families were in poverty in 2021/22 - because several benefit policies have a disproportionate impact on them. These include the two-child limit, which restricts eligibility for many child-related benefits to the first two children in a household, and the benefit cap, which limits the total income a household can receive in out-of-work benefits.
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