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.
Granted, changes to the tax and benefits system are a crude instrument. Given we are currently mired in the deepest recession many have ever lived through, however, they are a necessary short-term fix. Longer term, as the economy recovers, the emphasis on tackling child poverty can afford to shift to increasing remuneration of the low-paid.
But child poverty cannot be tackled just in Westminster. Improvements on the ground - for instance in partnership working between Jobcentre Plus, children's centres and family information services in boosting take-up of the childcare element of Working Tax Credits have a crucial role to play.
The recession will lead to a number of risks to the livelihoods of those in and vulnerable to poverty. Putting more money into the pockets of the most vulnerable will give their children a better chance of breaking the cycle of deprivation. And the stimulus required is just a fraction of the bank bailouts. The next few days will determine the fates of many children and young people's livelihoods.
Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now
