In a sign of the times, two charities renowned more for their international work - Save the Children and Oxfam - have this month focused their energies on the UK's poor, with the latter calling for a "people's bailout" from the government.
Leaving aside the moral arguments for such an investment - of which there are many - the case for meeting the 2010 target is based on cold economic logic. As Robert Joyce from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says, low- income families are more likely to spend any additional money given to them (see p8), thereby injecting more money into local economies and protecting jobs. What's more, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates the economic costs of educational failure, health inequality, disability and social breakdown from child poverty to come to £25bn a year, or £1,000 for every household.
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