THE NATIONAL YOUTH AGENCY: Youthinformation.com looksat ... Poverty in the UK

Some 4.1 million children live in poverty in the UK. The proportion of children who are living in poverty has grown from 1 in 10 in 1979 to 1 in 3 in 1998. The UK has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the industrialised world. Risks are highest for children living in:

- families without a working parent;

- lone parent families;

- families with young mothers (aged 16 to 24);

- minority ethnic families;

- families with three or more children;

- families containing one or more disabled persons, either a child or an adult.

The effects of poverty are:

- one in three children do not have three meals a day;

- one in three children lack adequate clothing, particularly shoes and winter coats;

- poverty in childhood increases the likelihood of unemployment and low income in adulthood. In 1993-95 the infant mortality rate for social class 5 was 70 per cent higher than that for social class 1;

- children aged up to 14 from unskilled families are 5 times more likely to die in an accident than children from professional families, and 15 times more likely to die in a fire at home.

- Extracted from youthinformation.com, The NYA's online information toolkit for young people. For more information, visit the site at www.youthinformation.com.