Plans to axe the UK’s child poverty measures have no support among

academics, local authorities or frontline services

In removing all income and material deprivation measures from the Child

Poverty Act, the government is acting against the advice of 99% of

respondents to its own consultation on child poverty measurement, find

Nick Roberts and Kitty Stewart.

Set against high profile discussions of proposed changes to the tax credit system,

another government reform with serious implications for low income families

has received relatively little attention. Under proposals in the Welfare Reform

and Work Bill, now under discussion in the House of Lords, the current suite of

income-based child poverty measures and targets in the Child Poverty Act 2010

are to be axed and replaced with new measures of worklessness and of

educational attainment at age 16. In addition, duties and responsibilities on

national and local government to reduce child poverty will be removed, and the

Act itself will be retrospectively renamed the Life Chances Act 2010. The

government has also announced that it will ‘develop a range of other measures

and indicators of root causes of poverty, including family breakdown, debt and

addiction.’

The existing Act contains four measures: relative income poverty (children living

in households below 60% of the national median); ‘absolute’ income poverty,

calculated against a poverty line pegged to median income in 2010/11; a

combined low income and material deprivation measure; and a measure of

persistent poverty. These measures were chosen following extensive

consultation and were designed to complement each other, with each capturing

different aspects of poverty. The Act was passed with cross-party support –

although the Conservatives warned that they believed the measures to be “poor

proxies for achieving the eradication of child poverty” and argued that they

would focus on “tackling the causes rather than the symptoms of poverty”,

naming these as worklessness, education, family breakdown and addiction. What

is happening to the Child Poverty Act now, then, is perhaps no more or less than

what was expected.

And yet the planned changes stand in direct conflict with the vast body of

expertise and opinion on the definition and measurement of child poverty. We

know this because we have examined the responses to a consultation held in

2012-13 by the Coalition Government into precisely this topic. Measuring Child

Poverty put forward the idea of a new multidimensional poverty measure that

“will reflect the reality of growing up in poverty in the UK today and how this has

an impact on outcomes in later life”, asking for views on a range of potential

‘dimensions’, including income, worklessness, unmanageable debt, poor housing,

family stability, parental health, drug/alcohol addiction and the impact of

attending a failing school. The DWP published a brief summary of the responses

in 2014, but in light of the current proposals we decided to examine the

responses themselves, to gauge the level of support for the current measures and

for the role of income in poverty measurement. A Freedom of Information

request gave us access to 230 of the 257 responses, submitted by academics,

think tanks, local authorities, voluntary sector organisations, frontline services

and individuals, between them pulling together many decades of experience in

service delivery and research.

The following findings are based on our analysis of these responses and lead to

an incontrovertible conclusion: There is very strong support for the existing

measures, and near universal support for keeping income poverty and material

deprivation at the heart of poverty measurement. We think this needs to be clear

in public debate as the changes to the Child Poverty Act go through Parliament.

First, there is a very high level of support for the current Act. Although the

consultation form itself made no reference to them, 82 responses specifically

stated that they would like to keep the existing measures as they are and wanted

no change, while a further 52 made it clear that they would only support

indicators relating to additional dimensions if they were treated as

supplementary information (relevant to wider child well-being or to children’s

broader life chances) but not as measures of child poverty itself (see Table 1). A

total of 56 respondents were open to new child poverty measures but for a

significant share of these this was still only in addition to the full suite of current

income-based measures. Only around 14% of respondents wanted to change the

measures themselves. Clearly, there is little appetite for change amongst those

most concerned with child poverty.

Table 1

Does the respondent see the need for new child poverty

measures?Total

Yes, to replace current measures 29

Yes, in addition to current measures 23

Yes, to change income measures 4

No, but open to supplementary information 52

No, keep as they are 82

N/A (did not express a clear view) 40

230

Second, there is near universal support for the inclusion of an income-based

measure. Indeed, the message is stronger than that: as can be seen in Table 2, for

the majority of respondents – 134 – child poverty is defined by a lack of material

resources, with income, alongside material deprivation, the best way to measure

this. In other words, for most respondents, income was not seen as one more

‘dimension’ amongst others, but as the very core of child poverty. This was true

right across the sample, reiterated in responses from academics, local

authorities, voluntary organisations and frontline services. In fact, of the 203

responses that referred to income in their response, only nine responses felt that

income should be included as anything but a headline measure and only one,

from a private individual, felt that income should not be included at all.

Table 2

Should income be included as a measure of child poverty? Total

Yes, poverty is a lack of material resources 134

Yes, as a key measure 28

Yes, dangerous to switch measures now 5

Yes, but with a focus on defined income-type measure 23

Yes, but with a focus on current absolute measure 2

Yes, but as an expenditure measure 1

Yes, but not as a headline indicator 9

No, income shouldn't be included 1

N/A (did not express a clear view) 27

230

Third, there is also very strong support for the concept of poverty as relative, and

for continuing to track relative income measures, despite the consultation

document highlighting that a relative measure can give a misleading picture

when median income falls during a recession. Respondents repeatedly

emphasised that the existing measures each have strengths and weaknesses and

need to be considered together. A small number advocated switching to a

poverty line based on a defined income level, feeling it made more intuitive sense

and would be easier to explain to the public. However, even amongst this group,

the majority still took a relative stance, with many mentioning the Joseph

Rowntree Foundation’s ‘Minimum Income Standard’ measure. Only two or three

argued for a more subsistence-type ‘absolute’ measure.

The fourth and final point relates to the new ‘dimensions’ proposed as

replacement measures by the government. There was support for tracking

indicators relating to some of these, in order to help understand their

relationship with poverty. However, they are widely considered to be unsuitable

as measures of child poverty itself, as many responses very clearly spelt out.

Taking ‘worklessness’ as an example, whilst many respondents acknowledged

that children living in households with no working adult are more likely to live in

poverty, almost as many pointed out that the majority of children living below

the poverty line in the UK today have at least one working parent. Others noted

that paid work may not always be possible or in a family’s best interest, such as

in households where a lone parent is caring for a very young or disabled child. If

children in these households live in poverty it is because of low material

resources, and the inadequacy of policies to address this, not because of the lack

of paid work per se. As repeatedly highlighted in responses from across the full

spectrum of contributors, it is a lack of material resources alone that is common to

all in poverty and only to those in poverty. It is therefore only a lack of household

resources, with income as the best proxy, that is suitable as a measure of child

poverty.

This gets to the heart of criticisms of the government’s proposals. The

dimensions that have been proposed can be understood as causes of poverty,

like worklessness, or consequences of poverty, like educational attainment. They

may also be considered important to wider child well-being, or to children’s

development and life chances. But they are not poverty itself, as it is understood

by the overwhelming majority of respondents to the consultation. In the eyes of

this majority, the government’s amendments are not changing the child poverty

measures, but bringing an end to the official measurement of child poverty in the

UK.

Why does this matter? For one thing, it is disquieting to see the government

acting in direct contradiction to such strong and unanimous expert opinion.

More importantly though, it matters because this is not ‘just’ a question of

measurement, but an indicator of government priorities – a point underlined by

the removal of the requirement for national and local authorities to have (and to

follow) a strategy for child poverty reduction. And this in turn matters because

government policies can influence household income very directly – more so

than they can perhaps any other variable, and certainly more easily than they

can affect household worklessness or young people’s educational attainment.

Recent discussion about the effects of proposed tax credit cuts provide one

illustration of this. That the government is opting out of holding itself to account

over measures that are widely understood to be of crucial importance to

children’s lives, and that it has considerable power to do something about, is of

serious concern. It is a development that can only be damaging to the interests

and prospects of children in low-income households.

Nick Roberts recently completed an MSc in Social Policy (Research) at the LSE

Kitty Stewart is Associate Professor of Social Policy at the LSE and Research

Associate at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE).