Will child poverty measurement changes see the problem ignored?
Derren Hayes
Monday, July 20, 2015
With the number of children living in poverty set to rise, campaigners warn the government's decision to scrap targets in the Child Poverty Act risks undermining efforts by welfare agencies to prioritise and tackle the problem.
The government justified its decision – announced earlier this month – to change the way it measures child poverty by claiming that a new system is needed that better monitors the life chances of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Under its plans, the current "deeply flawed" measures, contained in the Child Poverty Act 2010 and based largely on household income, will be replaced by new ones that are focused on assessing if the right conditions for improving social mobility exist (see box).
Child poverty campaigners have questioned the validity of the new measures, some saying it will mask the true levels of child poverty at a time when they are predicted to grow from 3.5 million today to 4.7 million by 2020, using the current definition.
A consultation carried out in 2013 by the Department for Work and Pensions found 97 per cent of respondents wanted to retain the current child poverty targets.
Here, child welfare experts explain what impact the changes will have on how agencies measure and address it.
Changes will undermine local action plans
By Enver Solomon, director of evidence and impact, National Children's Bureau
When the 2010 Child Poverty Act was introduced, it was not just a statement of the priority central government placed on tackling poverty, but it also sent a clear signal to all councils that they had a legally binding role to play too.
Local government makes a huge difference to children's lives, so the statutory requirement set out in the act to publish an annual assessment of the needs of children living in poverty in their area and a strategy setting out what the council would do to reduce child poverty was extremely significant.
Many local areas took this seriously and produced detailed strategies based on robust analyses of need and on consultation with families and other agencies.
Tackling poverty and disadvantage was elevated in the order of local priorities.
Tucked away in the guidance to the government's proposed life chances act are plans to scrap these duties on local authorities.
Not surprisingly, this has received much less attention than the proposals to remove the national income targets, yet it is just as significant.
Local government will no longer have to focus on actively identifying those children in poverty and then moving them out of it.
Given the many demands on councils, not least having to meet the needs of an ageing population with much less money than ever before, removing the duties on them will surely see far less activity and resources devoted to tackling child poverty.
The evidence is very clear that poverty is at the root of so many of the social ills that scar children's lives.
It is misguided not to require councils to set out how they intend to address it.
At worst, with the legal duties done away with, local authorities will be able to ignore the importance of tackling child poverty.
At best, they will only take action if local politicians vociferously demand it.
Scrapping relative poverty measures is 'confused'
By Alison Garnham, chief executive, Child Poverty Action Group
Iain Duncan Smith's statement to MPs earlier this month made clear the government's intention to scrap the four statutory measures of child poverty - relative poverty, absolute poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation - and the targets to end child poverty.
The Child Poverty Act, which the government is looking to effectively repeal, actually requires child poverty strategies to consider parental employment, skills, information and advice, physical and mental health, education, childcare, social services, housing, the built environment and social inclusion - the essential "life chances" building blocks set alongside the targets.
The relative poverty measure we use is a common-sense measure: everyone recognises that poverty is first and foremost about a lack of money. This is as close as you get to a dictionary definition of poverty.
If the proposals to scrap the existing measures and targets and replace them with measures on worklessness and educational attainment go ahead, then what the government means when it talks about poverty will be confused and confusing.
What is wrong with looking at worklessness and attainment? Nothing - except we won't be talking poverty.
Nor will we be measuring poverty if we look at the preferred indicators likely to be flagged up by ministers.
For example, while family breakdown and drug and alcohol addiction may increase the risk of poverty, they are also experienced by people higher up the income scale and problem debt may be a consequence of poverty, but is not the same as poverty.
The absurdity of this approach is best seen when we look at working poverty.
Children are much more likely to be in poverty because they have a parent who is a security guard or a cleaner than one who is an alcohol or drug addict. Nearly two-thirds of poor children live in working families. All this is pretty inconvenient for a government eyeing up tax credits for more cuts.
As it stands, it looks like these children will no longer figure in government measures. At a stroke, the government is about to abolish the concept, if not the reality, of child and working poverty.
Lacking money or being in work will mean you no longer count as poor.
Income is the key to poverty
By Matthew Reed, chief executive, The Children's Society
The government's decision to scrap income as a way to measure child poverty will do nothing to help the millions of children who are suffering in real poverty now or in the future.
By deciding to use inadequate measures based on worklessness and low educational attainment, the government is ignoring the reality that more than two million children - the majority of children in poverty - are living in households where at least one parent works. As a result of this shift, the government will fail to develop the plans needed to help these children.
As the latest Household Below Average Income figures reveal, over the past year, 200,000 more children have been pushed into severe poverty, and the number of children living in in-work poverty is on the rise. This clearly shows that even those families with jobs are suffering because of government policies.
Income lies at the heart of child poverty. It is vital to making sure that families can afford the food, heating, clothing and other basics that their children need.
Ignoring income and removing it as a measure will only lead to the introduction of yet more ineffective policies that continue to fail these children and their families.
Income must be returned as the key way to measure child poverty, so families can get the support they need to escape the poverty trap.
'In work' poor must be counted
By Javed Khan, chief executive, Barnardo's
The budget put the crowning touch on a burst of recent activity aimed at cutting support for the poor and instead motivating them to "work" their way off the breadline.
The idea that having a job is what determines whether people are poor is certainly what drives the government's plans to rewrite the Child Poverty Act - particularly the clause to scrap income as the basis for measuring poverty and replace it with whether the family is in work.
On the surface, the Chancellor's budget proposals seem to back up this narrative.
By raising the minimum wage to £7.20, the Chancellor promised to "give Britain a pay rise" raising the incomes of six million people and mitigating his cuts to working tax credits.
But this simply does not add up for many families. For example, a lone mother of two will lose £1,200 per year. Her tax credits will be drastically cut, as the threshold at which she can earn before her benefits are reduced is lowered from £6,400 to £3,900.
Her benefits will be frozen too, so that they will remain the same no matter how high the price of her electricity or food bills rise.
And, because she earns slightly above the minimum wage - around £8 per hour - she will not gain anything from the "national pay rise".
This mum works hard, and yet still struggles to earn enough to pay for the basics for her family.
And things will get worse for poorer families in the future.
From April 2017, larger families will no longer be able to claim tax credits for any more than two children - leaving them £53 per week worse off for every "extra" child than they are now.
In addition, those who start a family after April 2017 will find themselves unable to claim the family element, making them a further £10.45 a week worse off than families today.
And these proposals will impact on working and non-working families.
The day-to-day reality of poverty as experienced by many of our families is that no matter how hard they work, they simply don't have enough income to cover basics, such as food, let alone those horizon-expanding extras such as trips abroad or after-school activities.
None of these families would show up as being poor under the government's new child poverty measurements.
The fact is that 65 per cent of poor children grow up in "working families". Government effort would be better spent alleviating the misery of in-work poverty, rather than tinkering around with the way we measure hardship.
CHANGES TO MEASURES OF CHILD POVERTY
- The government plans to replace the Child Poverty Act 2010 with new legislation that it says will better measure the life chances of disadvantaged children
- The four main measures of poverty used in the current act - relative poverty, absolute poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation - will be scrapped, as will the 10-year government target to "end child poverty"
- Instead of defining child poverty as living in a household with 60 per cent of the median income, the new legislation will measure the proportion of children living in workless households and the educational attainment of pupils at the age of 16
- The government will also produce a "children's life chances strategy" that will set out a range of other measures covering the root causes of poverty, including family breakdown and addiction.